Just spitballing here but it would be great for the members of my site to be able to define, within certain parameters set by me, the look of the site when they login. Certainly the ability to change the colors, but maybe also which modules they care to have on their home landing page. For example if a member has a particular level permission that allows them to add articles or event banners for their event, they can have those modules appear only on their opening page. Perhaps someone else is more into the chat room and emails etc. They can have those load up after they login.

Thinking out loud here... could be a problem lol.

In plans, halfway there, and coming up with WWB 1.0 / iWiccle 2.0.

Off the top of my head, related features:

• Customizable member portal layouts using a limited version of Builder (the system already supports this, just the front-end tool missing!). This can in theory be extended for customizing any and all pages on the site. If you wanted to go completely wild, you could let each of your members customize all pages on your site for themselves! (Some cache benefits would obviously fly out the window if you did that though!)
• User-selectable color variants (any of the themes under your template set) for the entire site

I also have open folders for color/style customizations for user profiles, but I want to get it right the first time over as I don't care to turn iWiccle profiles into MySpace in the negative sense of the word...

Sounds great! No, I wouldn't want to give the members complete free rein over the look. Just a few modest tweeks here and there if they'd like.

MySpace = Yuk

Are there other areas you'd like to see member-customizable beyond the profile/portal and the landing page?

The profile/portal, when viewed by non-owner, probably should also have an option to override the member-defined template and see the default look, in the event that the customizations are too wacky for others' taste. I'm a bit divided over whether I should let the portal owner decide on the availability of the override option, or leave that as a site-wide admin option. (Or perhaps let admin decide which of the two modes is in use.) They're all possible, don't differ much in the amount of work to be done. Any thoughts?

My thoughts were a little more confined to our "design" but they have some ability to change the layout they see, but not the overall theme.

I wasn't thinking about giving each member the ability to change their profile page as viewed by the other members, although that might be a nice touch. Makes it more personal but like you I'm concerned about them having too much freedom and it brings us back to the over the top wackiness of some MySpace pages.

On further thought...

If it's not a big deal to do, why not give us webmasters the option of allowing users to make their profile pages a la MySpace if they want to. This way we as webmasters can choose to do so if we feel the members really want it. We can always turn off that option - if that's the way it would work.

I am more inclined to exercise a bit more control over what can be done, precisely to keep things generally presentable and up to a certain standard. Keith on the other hand is a supporter of the "every kind of mad change should be possible" approach. I suppose a merger of those two is where everything will evolve in the future -- and then flip it on or off as you will.

Whenever I get to digging a bit deeper into the AI side of our systems, perhaps one day you'll hear Wiccle give you a shout, "There's a 88% chance what you did looks like total crap and may possibly cause pain and convulsions in other visitors. Would you like to undo?". And a big "Please Do" button to go along. Maybe we can lease the technology to MySpace then.

LOL - Majel Barret saying: "WTF dude! Are you out of yer flipping mind or just color blind?

I think the best of both worlds, at least from your standpoint, would be to give us webmasters the option to let our members go hog ass wild or not so much. Something we can adjust from the admin panel. I for one would not allow people to make these gaudy MySpace abortions for profile pages, but that's just me. On the other hand if enough of my paying members want something like that... well then the customer is always right. Right? Um....

Someone remind me to start an aggressive campaign against IE7 as soon as I get a free slot of scheming time. Developing anything semi-modern for this browser is pure torture. Right now I have fixed one issue, and now in a totally unrelated place (again) things display or don't display (div content disappears) at random loads ---- and even at times it displays first, but when you start scrolling it disappears. Whoever is responsible for producing this piece of scheisse should be sued for crimes against humanity. It costs me hunderds of euros worth my time every week I need to be anywhere in its general vicinity.

Now I will go and have two cigs or as many as it takes, and then will fix this either with a hammer or a shotgun to get this release finally out. Everything else is perfectly fine and good to go for release right now and across every other browser including IE8, which I accept as the first act of atonement from the Microsoft browser development team, but only on the condition that IE 6-7 are promptly buried and no efforts are made to artificially prolong their life support. I will code something better than whatever their next generation web platforms are purely as a matter of personal vengeance at this point, 10+ years of IE trauma and counting.

Market monopoly position combined with sheer stupidity and irresponsible development can have massive global repercussions. When we've taken over the internets, if I am ever responsible for calls as bad as whatever decisions led to IE7 being what it is, someone come and knock me out for my own good pretty please.

Can't we just add in BIG BOLD type -  "IE7 users not wanted"

lol

Anyone who does that will get extra support. If you can get your friends to stop using Internet Explorer versions below IE8, I will buy you a beer or whatever else is your compensation of choice. If I could buy 500 million beers for everyone and with that make it go away, it would be a small fragment of the total savings effected for everyone who does anything online — probably covered in under a year.

On a related note, this file is now open: stopIE7.com. Time permitting, I will turn it into a combined campaign and support resource. As you can probably tell from my previous post, I have really had enough of this IE7 crap now. IE6/7 related issues and extra work easily amount to a five-digit figure in lost income by means of unnecessarily wasted development time for me alone, spanning from the last decade. Can you imagine what that means on a global scale?

The more they can both be marginalized, and the sooner they are end-of-life, the faster online technology on the whole can evolve, the more both businesses and developers will save in development costs, and the better and more versatile the software you use will be. (For example, I have been holding back on the extra color themes until this is sorted out, for obvious reasons.)

---

As far as the 1.21 release, I need to rewrite certain structures across the templates to get its stacking orders straight --- none of the obvious quicker fixes have been successful. I need a fair hour or so more for that, but will need to crash for a moment in between as it's 7 AM here by now, and we need to get something together tomorrow as well.

Those structures have now been rewritten, I am running a final round of display testing with IE7/8, FF, Opera, Chrome and Safari latest. Looking good. Meant to do this yesterday, but I was busy enough with our neighbours at Forster Court Hotel --- just wrapped up a lunch ordering system and some further SEO boost along with upgrading them to the latest core (and nailed six general bugs in the process, now fixed in core 1.21).

An interesting note on IE7 (and 8) javascript engine — the slideshow and cascading tiles effects you see in action on the site above were running 3x slower on IE, presumably just over the CPU load IE caused. Anyone struggling with similar javascript effect issues may want to either quantify or divide their variables by a factor of three to make them behave identically in IE and other browsers.

So I am now at a point where there are minor display differences between IE7 and the rest of the lot, and no bugs or errors in fuctionality that I can see. Other tested browsers (Firefox 3.6, Opera 10.10, Safari 4, Chrome 4, IE8) display all content identically.

The only IE8 issue is with transparent PNGs when an AJAX popup box using transparencies is dragged around or its opacity modified. In this case, IE forgets to keep displaying the transparency alpha channel, and switches it to black. This is a flaw in their graphics rendering engine. I have opted to let IE users live with their choice and keep seeing the black borders if they drag things around. Others can enjoy the drop shadows on the move and have a bit more dimension to their iWiccle experience.

(For the record, I think it's both laughable and perplexing that Microsoft goes all the way in trying to provide flashy transparency effects in their operating systems, while at the same time persistently holding back similar developments online by consistently releasing defunct graphics rendering engines. How damned hard can it be to get 24bit PNG transparency support right?)

A bit of fresh air now; (there went another five hours for IE that could have been spent in developing new features); and then it's packing time.

You're working pretty hard for a browser that will be defunct in a few months when M$ releases ANOTHER release... lol

Do hope and wish so. However, Microsoft's Internet Explorer Life Cycle Policy is something else.

"Versions of Internet Explorer that shipped as a part of the operating system will be supported with the support lifecycle of the operating system."

Also see the whole gory list of still supported products. Windows XP SP2 support ends on 13-Jul-2010. Windows XP SP3 has no stated end of life as of yet. IE7 is also bundled with Windows Vista. Unless these policies are changed, you can expect support for IE7 to go away whenever Vista is buried (rumor goes April 2012). Incidentally burying Vista seven feet under as soon as possible would be a great idea totally independent of the IE7 issue.

Then, you can expect these ghosts to stop haunting our sky whenever Windows 7 becomes the predominant Windows OS. If all of the above didn't scare you shitless, read on about IE version market shares. In 2009 — IE6: 27,4%, IE7: 26,1% — total 53,5% of internet users are still using one of these two nightmares to access the internets.

When IE6/7 shared market share comes down to a tenth of the above, web developers can start brushing them off and applying extra charges for customers who really want them supported. Until then, they are unfortunately a part of the deal and need to be actively considered. (Though I have given up on IE6 except for special cases, as the IE6 market share isn't that grand an issue among people who use rich internet applications such as ours.)

Do you now see why the concept of a global Stop IE 7 campaign begins to make sense? I have a good deal of sketches and notes on the concept by now for a combined campaign and support portal, and intend to aggressively advance the issue on a global scale in collaboration with every other affected web developer who wishes to contribute in rallying against IE7 and creating a better internet with more possibilities. Expect to see the project in full speed by April/May at the latest.