Swap Board Preview
I feel really bad about all my broken promises on delivering the swap board. The good news is that I've finally solved all the really big problems and it really is getting close to ready. In an effort to stay in y'all's good graces, I've begged and Sherry has given me permission to give you a little preview of the swap board.
Before you get too excited, you need to know the conditions:
- It is NOT ready to actually use. This means you are free to play with it, but be aware that everything you enter on it now is very likely to be annihilated in the near future.
- It is NOT finished. I know this is obvious but I want to emphasize it because...
- The email function does NOT work. In fact, I've done nothing with it yet and I cannot be responsible for what might happen. Clicking the email button may kill a kitten for all I know.
- The "Feedback" is guaranteed not to kill any kittens but I've worked on it only slightly more than email so at this point it doesn't do much and what it does do is not at all useful.
- There are some things that are decidedly unpretty. I haven't cleaned up all the style tidbits and there are a plethora of minor glitches, such as...
- The makeswap script that is invoked when you click the edit button or the "New Swap" link works but the redirect to return you properly after you submit the form does not work right. I encourage you to play with it (be sure to check out the nifty popup calendar!), but you'll have to click your back button twice and then refresh the main page manually after submitting anything.
- It will currently allow you to access it without being logged in (I think). That probably won't be the case when it's done and it probably isn't a good idea now.
- Sherry probably cannot answer your questions or help you with any of it yet. I would prefer that you not bug her about my shoddy work just yet. (I'll let you know when I'm ready to shirk all responsibility and then she's fair game.
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- I'm not likely to be around much this evening to answer questions and if/when I am around, I may decide it makes more sense to work on the code in response to your feedback rather than respond to it here. That most certainly does NOT mean that I don't want your feedback. One reason I'm doing this is so that I can get an idea of what you like and don't, what problems you're having, etc.
In addition to the feedback and email, I also still need to add the list of participants in the details of each swap. Those are the top three things on my to-do list right now, followed by a long list of minor fixes and clean up tasks.
If there are things you don't like, please be vocal about it. Ultimately I work for Sherry and I'll make no changes without her approval. It's good to have one point of decision. But I've done a lot of this based on my own ideas and I'm not a sensitive type. If you hate it, say so. You cannot offend me.
Speaking of which, I'm not ashamed of it, but it's not the way I wanted it either. The vBulletin issues took so much time that I decided to focus on "functional" so that I could get you something to use. There is a lot that I want to change on it, but right now I just want to get it complete and ready for you to use. I'll enhance it later. In particular, I don't especially like the "lightbox" thing I'm using for the "popups." When I have time to finish it the way I want it, everything will be updated in the page, "in place" and real time so that there is never a need to load or reload a whole page for any of the functions.
Oh, and I was just joking about the kittens. Click on anything you want. You can't hurt anything. Play with all of it 'til your heart's content. If there is anything you can do to totally destroy it, I'd prefer to know now so I can fix it before you actually start using it.
You can get to it by adding swap/ to the end of the main page address like so: http://stamp-shack.com/swap/
Have fun, but remember you've been warned. Don't come crying to me if you get hurt.
Update: As a couple of you have pointed out and/or questioned, there is some stuff there from Sherry's old site. It's just old data that I've been using for development and testing purposes. We'll get rid of all that when we are ready to "go live" with this board. (Which is why I warned you that anything you put on there will probably get disappeared at some point.)
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Originally Posted by Erin K
