Coming Soon: New Features

Mike

TP9 | VC15
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Sometime soon we'll be upgrading the site and adding a few new features. While the bugs are being worked out, though, I wanted to spend some time every so often and share some of those upcoming features with y'all. There isn't going to be anything super amazing, but there are a few things that I think y'all will really find useful going forward.

I'll keep a running list in this first post of all the features that have been shared in this thread, along with a link you can use to jump right to the post containing the details.

Upcoming Features
 
New Editor

The first thing I'd like to share with you guys is our new editor (picture below). Not only is it more visually appealing, it is lighter and faster loading too. It will also offer a few additional features of its own when it's released. I'll go over some of those here, too.

Pasting Images - If you use Firefox or Chrome (some limitations apply with Chrome) you'll be able to simply copy an image to your clipboard, and paste it directly into the editor and watch it be automatically uploaded as an attachment.

Drag and Drop - Alternatively, you can also drag and drop images directly into the editor to have them upload as attachments too. I think this will be a lot more useful than having to click on "Upload an Image" and browse to where it is on you computer.

Better Smilie Placement - The smilies, instead of being in a dropdown box, are now lined up across the bottom of the editor when you press the smiley button in the editor toolbar. That drop down box was extremely ugly to me, and really hard to navigate through since we have so many smilies to choose from. This method makes it a lot more visually likeable, at least in my opinion.

Here are a few screenshots of the editor with, and without, the smilies.

features-editor-2.jpg


features-editor-1.jpg
 
Conversations

There are a few new things going on with the private conversations that I think y'all might be fond of.

Conversation Participants Display - I've put a screenshot below, but you should notice that with the update you will now be able to see a list of all members who are participants in a conversation directly below the conversation title. This is great, especially for our "New Transaction Created" conversations. I'm sure most of you have already noticed that if you're the one who started the conversation, and were the last one who left a message in a conversation, the only way you can tell who it's to/from is to open it up. Thankfully, that won't be the case much longer.

Bulk Updating - In the screenshot you should also notice a new "checkbox" next to each conversation. Yes, this means you will now be able to leave all the checked conversations at once. This is especially great for people like me who only clean out my inbox once a month, or so. In fact, I haven't cleaned it in even longer now because I don't want to open each conversation individually to leave it.

conversation-list.png
 
Notable Members

Right now when you click on the members tab you simply get a huge alphabetical list of all the members registered on TCZ. Well, that's just not very useful at all unless you're a robot that plans on PMing every member on the site a link to where they can buy some little blue pills.

After the update, clicking on the members tab will instead bring you to a notable members page. This page will list notable members, sortable by members with the most messages (posts), most likes and most points. There will also be a tab so that you can view a list of the current staff members. I should also mention that there will be a sidebar on this page that will show a list of all members on the site who are celebrating their birthday that day. This will only work if those members don't have their date of birth hidden in their profile settings.

Here is a screenshot of what the Notable Members page will look like.

memberslist.png
 
Nice.

Wow I didn't know I was so popular (Or at least some of what I've said is popular) I thought I was the Grinch of this site.?:ROFLMAO:
 
@Member Tagging

This is probably one of the features that we're adding that will be liked, and most used, by most members of the site. This will be similar to using Twitter in that you can tag members in your posts, and they will get an alert when they log in letting them know they've been tagged in a post, and who it was who tagged them.

The first screenshot here is of me typing a reply to a thread. As you can see, as soon as I start to type a username after the @ symbol, it automatically tries to bring up the username I want to tag. In order to tag someone you could either just click their name in the dropdown, or finish typing their name after the @ symbol. I would recommend just clicking their name to make sure you don't misspell it. ;)

tagging.png


The next screenshot is just of the Alerts dropdown, so you can see what the alert will look like when someone has tagged you in a post.

tagging2.png
 
Forum Watching

You can already "watch" threads and receive alerts and/or emails when there are new posts. Now, after the update, you will be able to watch forums to receive alerts and/or emails when there are new threads. Below is a screenshot of the options you will get when you click on the "Watch Forum" link, along with a screenshot of the navigation bar with the new "Watched Forums" link, which can be used to view (and manage) all of the forums you're currently watching.

watch-forum.png


new-navbar.png
 
Responsive (Mobile) Style

I'm not sure if this will be the last "reveal" before these features are actually added to the site or not, but it is by far my favorite thing coming to TCZ. As someone who browses the site quite a bit on my phone, and other mobile devices, I feel it is very important for us to have something that looks a lot nicer and is easier to browse on those devices.

Here are some screenshots of what the finished product could look like.

This is a look at the forum home. Notice how the menu is collapsed. I should mention that even though I don't have a screenshot of it here, if I turn my phone sideways the menu will automatically expand since there is then enough room for it to do so.

responsive-home.png


When the menu is collapsed you'll simply need to click on the ellipses to get a view of the other menu items available. The same goes for the sub-menu (which also collapses/expands depending on screen size).

responsive-menu.png


Now, when you click on a forum, here is what the thread listing will look like. The "Latest post" info has been removed, but that's just because there simply isn't enough room for it to still look nice and neat within this style.

responsive-forum.png


Finally, here is a look at the thread view, showing how posts will be seen. Really the only thing missing here is the little bit of additional information under each member's avatar. All of that stuff can be seen on the member card, though, which will still be displayed in a popup by clicking on their username.

responsive-thread.png


Here is a look at how the membercards will be displayed in the mobile style, too.

responsive-membercard.png


I may add a few more screenshots of this responsive view later, but hopefully this will give you a little bit of a general idea of how the site might look on your mobile device once completed.
 
No Purchase Necessary

After my recent acquisition of NPNSportsCards.com, it was decided that we should display that NPN info right here on TCZ. So, that's exactly what we plan to do. All visitors, whether they are logged in or not, will be able to submit their NPN information into our database. Once approved, that info will be displayed right here on TCZ.

Here is a look at how the info will be displayed for each NPN.

feature-npn.png
 
All of these features should be implemented now. If you notice any problems, please let a member of the staff know so we can try to get it taken care of.

PS: Let me be the first to publicly tag someone. I'll tag @Cool_Hand_Flash since I know how much he'd want to be the first person tagged. :LOL:
 
I must say, being able to bulk update my private conversations is a great feature. I left over 250 conversations this morning in about 2 minutes. :D
 
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