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Jed Rosenzweig

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    Jed Rosenzweig reacted to Rikki for a blog entry, New in 4.1.12: Round up   
    Last week we introduced you to a couple of key new improvements in IPS Community Suite 4.1.12, the new post preview and enhanced activity streams and search. However, this is a packed release, so I wanted to quickly review what else you can expect to find when it is released this week.
    Mentions
    4.0 introduced mentions, and since then a frequently-requested feature is the ability to ignore notifications triggered by particular members. In 4.1.12, we enhanced the Ignore Users functionality to also allow you to block mention notifications. They will still be able to mention you in posts, but you will no longer be notified about it.

    Ratings
    As of 4.1.12, ratings will now display half-stars in order to be more accurate. Users will still rate whole stars out of 5 (or 10 if configured so), but the aggregated ratings displayed alongside content will be more fine-grained.
    Custom date formatting
    We have used built-in, automatic locale formats for dates since 4.0, but it became increasingly clear that this did not offer the flexibility that some community administrators desired. As a result, 4.1.12 re-introduces the ability to provide custom formats for dates.
    Bug fixes
    Amongst the handful of new features, there's over 400 other bug fixes and improvements that contribute towards the overall stability of the IPS Community Suite, as we start working towards the next major release, IPS Community Suite 4.2 which will be available later this year. Further fixes for stability in the 4.1 line will come before 4.2 is available.
     
    Please check our release notes to read more about other smaller changes and fixes in 4.1.12.
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    Jed Rosenzweig reacted to Rikki for a blog entry, New in 4.1.12: Post preview   
    We are currently beta testing our next release, 4.1.12, which contains hundreds of bug fixes, dozens of improvements, as well as a handful of new features. I wanted to introduce one of those new features: post preview.
    Long-time users of our software will know that a post preview function was a standard feature, but we took the decision to not include it in the initial IPS4 release. It had a couple of drawbacks:
    it only applied to certain pages, such as topic view - other WYSIWYG editors simply didn't get a preview the workflow wasn't very good for modern web apps, requiring a round-trip to the server and a full page refresh When IPS4 was released, we felt that the built-in rendering of the editor was a sufficient preview of how the end result would appear. However, while analyzing ongoing customer and user feedback for IPS4 in its first year of release, we have seen that a preview still has a use. There are some circumstances when a true WYSIWYG experience is just not possible such as using more advanced formatting (like LaTeX) or when admins create certain custom editor plugins.
    As a result, we rethought post preview. We wanted to ensure that all editors could be previewed, and that it didn't have a clunky workflow. In addition, since IPS4 uses a responsive theme, we wanted to give users the opportunity to preview how their post would look on different devices.
    Here's the result, and what will be available in 4.1.12:

    Post preview in IPS Community Suite 4.1.12
    The preview is shown by clicking a new button on the toolbar (meaning it can be moved, removed, etc. just like the other default buttons). When the preview loads, the toolbar allows the user to resize it to different device sizes. If they are on desktop, they can also view it at tablet at phone sizes; on a tablet, it can also be viewed at phone size.
    So now we not only show a true preview of what content will look like when posted, but we also allow you to preview how it will look on other devices. Of course that preview is just a best-guess since different devices have different window sizes but it does give you an idea.
    We hope this reimagining of an old feature for a more modern web will please end-users and make posting content a more accurate process. Stay tuned for more updates on what's included in 4.1.12!
    Version 4.1.12 is currently in beta testing and should be released in the next two weeks.
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