an idea : lobby integrated news database

[Satirik]

mmmh i did the script pretty fast, the thing is, when you close the window, it just disapear, the window should be made once and then just change the Visible property to true to show it again

but don't bother with that, i think i will integrate a news system to tasclient but first i need something nice to show them

[Satirik]

like that

[KaiserJ]

hmmm... i can see what you mean about the window visibility; pretty used to object oriented programming from flash, so it all seems very familiar and yet foriegn and new to me.

the mockup looks pretty decent must say; what database are you going to grab that information from? and will the news page be RSS based, or HTML in a window?

also : about the window visibility; i think having that information (even as a template) would help others in their attempts to create lobby extensions... i had ideas to make a quick-links window (to jobjol, clan-sy etc) and a few other things that would hinge on me understanding how to do it.

*edit* didn't mention integrated spring radio... do want?

[Satirik]

hmmm... i can see what you mean about the window visibility; pretty used to object oriented programming from flash, so it all seems very familiar and yet foriegn and new to me.

the mockup looks pretty decent must say; what database are you going to grab that information from? and will the news page be RSS based, or HTML in a window?

also : about the window visibility; i think having that information (even as a template) would help others in their attempts to create lobby extensions... i had ideas to make a quick-links window (to jobjol, clan-sy etc) and a few other things that would hinge on me understanding how to do it.

*edit* didn't mention integrated spring radio... do want?

read the api.txt to know the available call in and out

if you want to know the object properties you can get the properties and print them ... or use the power user mode ctrl shift f8

about the integrated news system i'll add a new tab to the main tabs like $home and it will be the default page, for the online part ... mmmh i won't do it :) i hope you will :) using whatever you want but it must be nice, i can provide the psd if you want to use it

and python supports OOP but making python object from delphi is a bit harder so i just provide "classic" functions

edit: maybe i'll add a small horizontal scrolling news between the main menu and the chat

[Forboding Angel]

about the integrated news system i'll add a new tab to the main tabs like $home and it will be the default page, for the online part ... mmmh i won't do it :) i hope you will :) using whatever you want but it must be nice, i can provide the psd if you want to use it

Going for the simplicity of things, I'm fairly sure that simply setting an RSS feed display page would be easy enough to modify so that you could make it look however you wanted.

Worst comes to worst, make a php page that has all the css stuff, then run the RSS page as an include and you'd end up with the desireable result (theoretically... I've never tried to use an rss feed as an include... O_o, would it work?).

[Forboding Angel]

Oi, answering my own question, looked into it and it's a bit more indepth than what I described, but it can be done fairly easily. I'm working on an example atm, will show a link once I have something useful.

[KaiserJ]

i really like that idea satirik... having it load in one of the lobby tabs is defenitely preferable.

scrolling news is also a pretty cool idea, like a stock ticker?

we go with something HTML based for now, then most of the hard work is already done as far as the implementation goes... what i've been working with today amounts to a re-interpretation of the data from springinfo, keeping in mind that it will load in a "channel" space within the client and only show articles marked as "news" in abbreviated form, and with thumbnails and a byline etc. in order to keep the articles looking sexy and tempting to click... (i also really like how the main image of the index of this site changes... something like that will be included to make sure people glance EVERY time)

hopefully i can work with forboding on including some subcategories for news (split mod news from map news etc... for more organization for a news-only mini site) and a thumbnailer to upload and format various sized images, i've worked with cms before so i doubt it would be too hard to implement. im not sure what i'd like to include yet, ideally the new elements would be the type of thing that could be used in the "regular" springinfo site as well.

i'd like to get the blessing of some of the forumers / devs etc. for my stylesheet and layout etc. as well before i make any requests of others... anyways... if we can make $home html based, i will work very hard to make something really, really nice. psd shouldnt be directly necessary, as i'll be creating the layout with CSS (current one is actually similar to your layout) although i may steal some of the scheme to make it match with the TASclient loading screen.

i will agree with anyone who says that directly accessing an RSS feed is an overall better solution than a HTML window... however, i lack the expertise to make it happen anytime soon, and i have a feeling most of the people who could do it currently are busy with bigger and better things. i'm aiming on making the page require as little bandwidth and memory as possible. if it's fail anyways, then reading the RSS directly with python will be win... but something based around a webpage seems for now to be the best solution, just based on what we have available currently.

at the very least, it can be the standard by which a python based news page is measured

[AF]

Can we guarantee that the feed and its maintainers will be lobby agnostic and that we will not have to make implementation decisions as a result of this process? Because if we dont and we follow lobby xyz's lead then that will lead to eventually either multiple feeds and systems, or, lack of use.

[Wisse]

And because of that don't match TASClient's load screen.

Make neutral theme. Maybe match it whit this site.

I would still prefer small banner in individual channels (see my mock up) over separate tab, because it's probably gonna get ignored.

[AF]

In that case i would veto a html based system on the grounds that it would never look right, especially once a second program implements it.

Use RSS feeds and then read them in and generate html/css in the lobby as an implementation detail in that particular project so as to remove the problem from the system entirely.

[el_matarife]

like that

http://www.lipsum.com/ Hot tip: use Lorem Ipsum text for dummy pages since it looks more natural.

In that case i would veto a html based system on the grounds that it would never look right, especially once a second program implements it.
Use RSS feeds and then read them in and generate html/css in the lobby as an implementation detail in that particular project so as to remove the problem from the system entirely.

He's right, if we want the news page to look right in every lobby we need a raw data RSS feed then apply the styling on the lobby side.

[Forboding Angel]

hopefully i can work with forboding on including some subcategories for news (split mod news from map news etc... for more organization for a news-only mini site) and a thumbnailer to upload and format various sized images, i've worked with cms before so i doubt it would be too hard to implement. im not sure what i'd like to include yet, ideally the new elements would be the type of thing that could be used in the "regular" springinfo site as well.

Pfft easy as pie. Additionally, you have access yourself to make new categories as well. Splitting them is easy as a few clicks.

So you want News/Maps/Mods cats? If so then tbh it really couldn't be much easier to do.

As far as a thumbnailer goes, all you would have to do is limit images to a certain size on the html. Keep in mind that the backend is wordpress, so you might check out some of the rss stuff the guys over there have done, might save you a little work here and there.

I just added the categories with "News" as the parent category so everything stays all nice and neat.

[Forboding Angel]

BTW I am currently updating the style of springinfo to something a bit more applicable for a spring gaming news site that I believe everyone will like, so please forgive me for stuff looking kinda wierd for a bit

Edit: Finally done for the most part... If any enterprising sould would like to make a banner for the top I wouldn't be upset ;p Check it out! http://springinfo.info

[AF]

I might make you one. btw message me tonight, I have a script you may well find useful that I'm currently using on my darkstars theme. I'd also install the wp_supercache plugin if I were you.

Sites like this might well be much easier if anonymous people could submit news for approval. Also if there was a links section on this site. Im sure springinfo aswell as other sites such as the starwars site, spring1944, CA, darkstars or smoths forums etc etc would benefit greatly as would the spring community itself. We would look larger and more active to the outside world.

btw can you add darkstars to the 'partners' section at the bottom?

[Forboding Angel]

'Partners "are the links. Meh, I'll just change it to say "links", and yes I can, but I can't remember the URL to darkstars... Is it jsut darkstars.co.uk? Hmm goes to check...

Yar it is. I'll get it done right away.

Anon posting isn't going to happen, cause then you have to police even more what gets submitted, also, there are certain things that need to be done when posting, such as which category (and yes it does matter, not gonna go into detail atm tho as to why it does), adding a thumbnail, and various other things.

THat's why there is a user news submission subforum. Just register and maek post, at which point I do all the work of tidying it up, making sure it is done correctly, and so on.

If you want to make an anon post, email it to me, and I'll put it up.

[Masure]

Nice redesign forb.

[Satirik]

yeah you took a skin a lot nicer , indeed !

[Forboding Angel]

There is a lot more involved than just changing a skin... You essentially get a basic framework of sorts and then have to tailor it, but yes, it is much faster than doing it from scratch.

At any rate, thanks ;p

[Satirik]

okay i like how springinfo is now but to be displayed directly in the lobby it would need some changes to remove useless part (ie things taking lot of space and not needed to be displayed in a lobby) and move things to get more usefull info :)

[Forboding Angel]

Oi, well okies. Your points are good ones, after I get some sleep I'll play with it some.

One thing to mention would be that I had imagined that the RSS feed would be displayed in the lobby (with some extra formatting to make it purdy). The posts are set up into categories which each have their own rss feeds, or you can view the rss feed for all categories, so there is some flexibility there.

Tbh I really think the RSS feed would be the way to go, for example, feedburner with just the default formatting looks really nice, additionally the RSS feed takes as you know, pretty much no bandwidth and laughable processing time, so it would display really really quickly in the lobby.

It could be done by showing just the site, yes that is possible (essentially just making a hacked up extra index.php for it, discarding the headers and footers and only showing the meat of it).

The section on the right that you indicated no understanding of it's real use is actually to display only recent posts from the news category. I need to learn not to post such lengthy titles, but that is a fault with me, not the dealie itself. The mods, maps, lua, and video sections only have the latest post displayed on the front page.

I'll play around with it some after I've had some sleep