Code Census

Wow, its been a while since Ive updated the blog. Ive been busy with a bunch of things.

Recently I launched a code counter with all of my public InvisionFree codes (as of this posts writing, three) to get an idea of just how many people use my codes. The counter was left on for a full 24 hours, give or take a few minutes. Im pretty happy with the results of the census; approximately 150 individual active boards have my codes installed and working. I say approximately because the results included about 2 google caches and 4 duplicates, and also did not count any of my codes which are self-hosted by the board owner. The next time I activate the counter, I hope to see even more boards in the results. The counter ate my bandwidth a bit, so I cant release a link to the results at this time. Sorry.

Also, I just updated to Beta Blogger and added an AdSense bar.

Two Code Updates for Reply-Blocker and dSig

Reply-Blocker has a few updates in store for it. Most of them are similar to the ones applied to dSig. They are listed below:

Make individualized (private per-user) cookies
Fix manager feature
Fix loadpoint
Confirm compatability with FF
MAYBE disallow Mod/admin blocking


dSig will also be receiving a small update to its cookie feature. The cookies use a character to distinguish different users and blocked names. The problem is if any user has that character in their name they cant be blocked and also cant use dSig! My solution is to change the character into something that IF boards dont allow to be in their user names. I havent figured out what yet, but when I do Ill let you know. This update will be included with the new version of Reply-Block as well.

Finished: dSig Update

I released dSig v3 about a week ago. It was going well until I got reports of an incompatibility with Firefox. Today I pushed out dSig 3.0.1, which features support for Firefox and a new runtime expansion that allows dSig to run faster than before.

The main reason behind the runtime expansion was not a concern of speed, but of conflicts with other codes. dSig uses a User CP addition called dSig Manager. In the method before 3.0.1 the code was run through the window.onload event, which can only hold one value per loaded page. Meaning if there is another code using the onload event, only one of the codes will run. In the new method, I check to see if the page is already loaded. If it is, dSig is run immediately. If it isnt, dSig is added to the onload event. I would like to make the immediate running mandatory, but that would mean becomming unavailable to boards with previous versions installed.

Reopening dSig

Well, Ive been working on the forum software for ThE NuBs. Its still not completely done, but its getting closer. I also finished Project Apex for now till the owner of it gets online again.

So, with those two monster projects done, Im ready to reopen an old code: dSig. I had said I would upgrade it back in the days when I wasnt so busy. I tried to open and edit the beta files of the work I had done towards the new version, but after reading through it a few times, I realized that the function and methods I had used in the old version wouldnt be able to work correctly with the ammount of data I would be passing it in the new version. As a result, Ive decided that it will be easier to completely recode the new version instead of just changing the structure of the function.

That means it will be a longer wait for the code, but will be definately worth it. As usual, Ill continue to post updates on the new versions progress as it unfolds.

Warn Logger Trouble

At first, the release of Warn Logger seemed like a big success. But then reports came in of a problem that was causing a board error. After cranking out the next version with the fix, I found out that for some reason one of the features, the one that allows you to post reports as new topics, wasnt working. I have no idea why that is as the code that deals with that feature was never even touched.

With this version came two more problems! The code now had some compatibility issues with Firefox and was causing "Aborted Action" errors in Internet Explorer. After talking with a friend, I figured out that the IE error was caused by dynamically knocking elements out of the DOM. I fixed the problem and it seems that the FF incompatibility was also being caused by the same problem.

So far, there have been no more bug reports. Hopefully it will stay that way and I can get some peace!

On a side-note, Ive started work on a "resource site" by a group called Project Apex. Its a pretty nasty little organization. The heads of the group are highly experienced web users, some including hackers, programmers, scripters, and other ranks from the "dark net". They all agree that there is no reason to fear them or not visit their site as their objective isnt to mess with innocent computers. Check it out at http://www.project-apex.com.

Finished:Warn Logger

Thats another code down! The long-awaited code Warn Logger is finally completed!

Check out this topic for details about how to install it. ^_^