On 12/8/11 4:55 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
As mentioned previously, I've been working on a web frontend for the
DigitalMars NNTP server. I collected ideas and inspiration from the
several threads on this topic in the last few weeks, and now I think
that the result is ready for beta testing and general use.
The current (temporary) URL is:
http://dfeed.kimsufi.thecybershadow.net/discussion/
This is an absolutely fantastic development. It's exactly the kind of
thing that D needs - using D to write something nontrivial and highly
useful. I just got in touch with Walter about it, and as of now you have
in us strong supporters for replacing the existing Web bridge with this one.
One thing though - you must use hyphenation everywhere :o).
Here are a few large topics that we should discuss a bit:
- Would you consider merging your codebase with
d-programming-language.org? That way we'd have a simple deployment
target and simpler unified maintenance. The downside would be that your
project would have less individuality as an independent NNTP-WWW bridge.
(That could be partially addressed with directory structure etc.)
- If not, how do we go about integrating with
d-programming-language.org? For example say we change the navigation
panel on the left. Then we'd need to coordinate with you to pull the
code, regenerate your own page, and so on.
- I'm thinking something with iframes may work for the above issue, but
cross-domain iframes are limited. Could we serve your content off d-p-l.org?
My nits to be added to others':
* Registration flow is odd. You register, but then you're not taken back
to the forums page.
* Password during registration appears in clear.
* The C and C++ forums should not be on the same page. We should focus
only on the D forums. It's possible to link them via a new page.
* This may be a good time to retire a few unused forums such as dtl.,
debugger, dwt, ide, and merge their contents with digitalmars.D.
* The forum descriptions and possibly layout should emphasize
digitalmars.D as the "main" forum, and digitalmars.D.learn as the "main
n00b" forum. Generally first-comers will be confused as to where they
should be posting when facing a large table that must be read in full,
and most of the time they want either digitalmars.D or digitalmars.D.learn.
* The lists dmd-beta etc. should be under a different heading and
deemphasized. They are for experts only and not nearly as prominent as
the main forums.
* The style file should be loaded from d-p-l.org such that changes in
style will be automatically picked up by the forums page.
* In horizontal split mode, the footer is disproportionately large (btw
I made it smaller recently).
* Use of bold in split mode for unread posts seems a bit heavy. How
about a different background color?
* It's not obvious how people should set up their own gravatar.
Andrei
