Yes, the team was working on a new design, and some could even test the beta. However, at some point news and updates simply stopped appearing, and development seemed to stall. It wasn't until a week or two ago that Aldie in a casual and off-hand manner described what had happened: the site design would simply have tacked a different skin onto a MVC-style code base which Aldie had literally grown fed up with. (MVC is ICT-jargon, being an abbreviation for 'model view controller', meaning that you have a DB full of data, and then program various shells which retrieve, modify and present this same data in various ways, depending on the needs of the user and he wants to achieve.) It was not true MVC, it was old, it was grown organically, it was quirky, and it would not have solved what he perceived to be fundamental issues, like for example having crappy support for mobile access to the DB. He was currently in the process of reviewing some 3rd party alternatives to his own MVC-code base so that he would be freed from programming and maintaining the bare MVC-basics, focussing instead on the implementation specifics which would make BGG BGG. And not just on a computer or laptop, but also on a tablet or smartphone or app or whatever. He was also studying ways to offload the generation of the HTML necessary for the user to interact with the website to yet another 3rd party framework, again with the intent of not being burdened (as much) with the basics of this process. Some geeks offered brief suggestions for these quite specialist packages, highlighting various strengths and weaknesses. And that was basically all.
So, summarising: the redesign we've been hearing about for the better part of two years has been effectively shelved. Aldie is curently looking at a far more radical and fundamental redesign of the website than he had ever planned or envisaged. There is, for the time being, also no longer a date when the job will be finished: there are too many variables and uncertainties to consider, and a lot depends on how easy it is to move important subsystems (like for example the notifications) to these new frameworks. One advantage, though: when Aldie's done, the website will probably be a lot less quirky, and have a lot more consistent interface no matter how you access it. Maarten On Jan 14, 12:26 am, Crokinole Dundee <[email protected]> wrote: > It seems like a while ago, there was talk of a new site redesign. Is this > something in the works? It sure needs it badly. Not to look a gift horse in > the mouth or anything. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BGG Down" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/bgg_down?hl=en.
