Lobby news home page

[Satirik]

If someone coul make a lobby news home page for TASClient

this http://www.springinfo.info/newspopout.php/ is a bad example, no popup, no wasted space, best thing would be to show both latest news (dev and community) and latest forum topic, springinfo has rss feeds, same for spring forum and news

the page could have two part, one with only pictures (nice ones) linked to news (new map new mod etc) and another with only news/topic titles

but you're free to make whatever you want as long as it's good (ie forum members like it)

[Forboding Angel]

Pay attention, this part is important:

Steam:



Springinfo:



*****

Notice the similarity? Speaking of popups, the showing of the homepage was a popup... A massive one at that.

I have bent over backwards to comply with your inane requests satirik, and frankly, I'm tired of it.

[Satirik]

well, we just don't share the same point of view on lobby news home page ...

and btw you can disable steam popups if they annoy you too (i guess they don't)

[Forboding Angel]

What exactly do you want? It has rotating news (every 10 seconds), left and right arrows to browse through quickly, an email signup for feedburner, a logo and a link for submitting news. What exactly is the problem?

[Satirik]

What exactly do you want? It has rotating news (every 10 seconds), left and right arrows to browse through quickly, an email signup for feedburner, a logo and a link for submitting news. What exactly is the problem?

did you read the first msg of this thread ? the home page is visible only before you click on "login" in tasclient, so it's not annoying, the aim is to show latest news to players, so before clicking if they see something interesting ... a screenshot, a title whatever they click on it before logging in, they won't wait 10s between each news before clicking on login, if they launch a lobby it's to log in and play

[Forboding Angel]

What exactly do you want? It has rotating news (every 10 seconds), left and right arrows to browse through quickly, an email signup for feedburner, a logo and a link for submitting news. What exactly is the problem?

did you read the first msg of this thread ? the home page is visible only before you click on "login" in tasclient, so it's not annoying, the aim is to show latest news to players, so before clicking if they see something interesting ... a screenshot, a title whatever they click on it before logging in, they won't wait 10s between each news before clicking on login, if they launch a lobby it's to log in and play

Well by your very own definition, if they were to see a screenshot or text that interested them, they would be reading it anyway, at which point, 10 seconds might not actually even be enough.

Combine that with the fact that there are the left and right buttons for flipping news items.

It is designed to be unobtrusive, just like steam updates. I LOVE the steam updates and they are a reason why I have so many games through steam. A lot of people share that view.

This all brings me back to, what exactly do you want, what what exactly is the problem with what I've provided? Your first complaint was that it was too big, and now it's not big enough? Please explain to me how that makes sense.

No one is going to mistake tasclient for adware/malware. The idea is borderline ridiculous.

[Forboding Angel]

Ack

Ok satirik, you fail epicly at explaining what you want. I see what you want now. Basically, instead of the site being shown in a window, it's being shown as the main screen or in a tab of tasclient... Why didn't you mention that before?

I haven't been able to use tasclient since I switched to win7, so it's not like I could have known. Sigh.

So would you please Explain to me why the banner is a big issue again?

[Jazcash]

It seems pretty unattainable, but what would be epic win awesome would be if the news stuff was displayed upon loading a game instead of these fugly distorted loadscreens

[Satirik]

Ack

Ok satirik, you fail epicly at explaining what you want. I see what you want now. Basically, instead of the site being shown in a window, it's being shown as the main screen or in a tab of tasclient... Why didn't you mention that before?

I haven't been able to use tasclient since I switched to win7, so it's not like I could have known. Sigh.

So would you please Explain to me why the banner is a big issue again?

well i showed you screenshots when i did it ... are you kidding me ? plus tasclient works on seven for a while now

[Argh]

Better yet, just have a dedicated news pane. One that loads when the software loads, instead of waiting for you to log onto the "official server".

And, while I'm poking into this discussion... why is it that buildbot Spring builds aren't downloading the current version when we choose that installation option? Seems kind've retarded, to have to update the client after we've installed everything The same goes for SpringLobby as well.

And currently TASClient hangs on exit.

[Satirik]

Better yet, just have a dedicated news pane. One that loads when the software loads, instead of waiting for you to log onto the "official server".

And, while I'm poking into this discussion... why is it that buildbot Spring builds aren't downloading the current version when we choose that installation option? Seems kind've retarded, to have to update the client after we've installed everything The same goes for SpringLobby as well.

And currently TASClient hangs on exit.

there was a full home page loading with tasclient, and visible right after, before you log in, and when logged in there was an horizontal rss panel

edit: and it doesn't hang on exit here , sometimes, rarely, there is a crash window visible 1s but that's all

[Jazcash]

TAS Client working fine here for me on Windows 7 apart from a few minor bugs.

[Argh]

there was a full home page loading with tasclient, and visible right after, before you log in, and when logged in there was an horizontal rss panel

The rss panel isn't informative and has no graphics, and the full-page thing has never worked right- it just flashes briefly, then it's gone. Kinda defeats the purpose, either way, imo. I'd rather see a 400X400 news pane- big enough for pretty graphics and a hyperlink. With a nice, obvious, don't-show-this-again X in the corner, ofc.

Hell, I'd actually post updates about P.U.R.E. now and again around here, if any of the ways to do so were addressed. That's one of several that are pretty broken, imo.

edit: and it doesn't hang on exit here , sometimes, rarely, there is a crash window visible 1s but that's all

My experience under XP is that I get a crash window every time it exits. Seems fine otherwise. It's a weird bug.

[Forboding Angel]

Argh, how about this, would this be acceptable in your opinion?

springinfonewssmaller.jpg

(272.62 KiB) Downloaded 2 times

Oops, I cropped the bottom badly, but you can always go here and see it: http://www.springinfo.info/newspopout.php

[Satirik]

...

well with auto login on startup you surely didn't see it and players don't want a big news panel ... they all whined when i added the news ...

[Argh]

well with auto login on startup you surely didn't see it

And I don't see it now, without auto-login. Nor do I see it at application start, Steam-style, which is done that way for a reason.

they all whined when i added the news ...

I remember some brief crying about it, but they got over it. News is a big need, and it's more important than some crybaby whining about how the free MP client on the free engine on which they play free games might, omg, show news about stuff that isn't DSD. IDK how you can even take those people seriously... if they don't want to see news, they can either click a nice, obvious X, which would kill the pane... or use SL. You can't make everybody happy, but if they're not happy that it's pretty, but 100% optional... fuck 'em.

I'm with Forb on that one- I keep the "what's new" on on Steam, because I like knowing what's new. I can understand if people don't- that's why it's an option. But if it's going to be there at all... make it work well. The RSS feed doesn't cut it.

@Forb: That's pretty classy. Needs a nice, explicit link-to-get-this-now.

[Satirik]

you don't see it now because there is no news in tasclient anymore

[Argh]

Which is why we're having this discussion in the first place. Having news was good.

It wasn't getting used to its potential, and it sounds like you and Forb needed to work out some technical stuff. I figure if you're going to work that out with Forb, might as well make it work like it should've in the first place.

[Forboding Angel]

@Forb: That's pretty classy. Needs a nice, explicit link-to-get-this-now.

Well, clicking the picture, the title or the "Read More" link will take you to the post itself, is that good enough?

Doing all this is surprisingly difficult. I'm essentially stripping the layout using session variables, however, certain things cannot be stripped out without crippling other things. Figure that wordpress is an intricacy of includes, you you can probably understand how things could get messy. Tbh, the hardest part is finding the correct places to strip things out.

BTW kids, if I can manage it, springinfo and springguides may be linked up at some point in the near future, with features so that anyone can post a guide for their favorite mod. The posts would be syndicated on springinfo.

And argh, you pretty much completely understand what I've wanted in the first place. Steam-like news. The steam news thingy is the best piece of advertising since sliced bread. I know I'm not the only one who ends up spending lots of money because that thing came up and alerted me that something interesting went on sale.

Now my idea for how it could be implemented in TASclient is that perhaps it could be a dropdown pane in the client itself, easy to use, and easy to dismiss if needed. Displaying a webpage upon client start is ok I guess, but it isn't classy at all in my opinion, and there are plenty of ways to introduce "popups" without actually popping anything up.

Figure this. You start tasclient, a pane slides down from below the menubar containing news. Below that you get the login dialog. Login, news stays there until it is dismissed (or maybe just until the login button is hit?), and after it has been dismissed, there is a button on the menubar to bring it back again. Then in settings for tasclient, a checkbox for displaying news on startup or whatever. If this checkbox was unticked (as in news go sod off) then the button would still be on the menubar to expand the news pane.

To me this seems to be about the most unobtrusive practice you could get.

[Jazcash]

Finally, somebody who realises simple is sexy.