Recent Updates/Changes

Let's see how good I am at keeping this page up to date...

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• 05/30/2006
• Added print stylesheet, which removes the navigational area on the lft side when items are printed. Please advise of any oddities in display as this change required an update to all pages, and it's possible I inadvertantly missed one.
• 05/29/2006
• Minor update to code on series display pages, better XHTML compliance
• 05/27/2006
• Added the Fair List
• 05/26/2006
• Added a list of the upcoming New York Times Bestsellers®
• Added Marissa's List
• 04/21/2006
• Added the reject list to the website.
• 04/17/2006
• Fixed a bug that resulted if a user included a comma in the BKSID field in the add category area.
• Fixed major bug that would not allow new accounts to function correctly. I'm rather surprised someone didn't clue me in to its existance
• 03/31/2006
• Added Rescan List display and Add a Title to Rescan List
• Fixed a message that should have been tagged as error, but instead was success on the Add Title to Category page.
• 03/30/2006
• Fixed a link on the registration required page that appears if a person attempts to access a restricted area without being logged in.
• 01/05/2006
• Fixed bug that would only allow entries to contain one apostrophy (') in a single field.
• 12/30/2005
• When adding a title to a category, the system checks to make sure the BKSID entered isn't already part of that category. If it is an error message is returned.
• Initial sort on the category section is by date added, the initial sort in series is by position. All old links still work properly.
• Sort options added to both category and series pages. Category sort is purely by the item selected. Series sort is by the item selected and then title. Appropriate javascript was added to link the combo boxes with the Update! button.
• Updated series and category sections to keep track of which books are viewed most often. Every book starts at 0 views as of today. Each link now points to forward.asp which updates the database before redirecting to the appropriate BookShare page. If a book is listed in both a category and a series, the number of views is updated in both places.
• Tips are now displayed with the most frequently viewed at the top. Each time the tip is viewed it adds a count to the database, which upon a fresh load of the browse tips area will display them in descending order (starting with the most viewed). All tips started at a views value of zero as of today.
• 12/29/2005
• Lots of improvements! I've been working on tweaks off and on for the past few months. Here are some of the highlights.
• Tips section integrated! Now the tips area is part of the same site, one URL will get you to it all.
• Tips area now requires login to add a tip.
• When loading pages without being logged in, only accessible links are shown. Links to items that will require a login are withheld until such a login is made.
• Pages like Edit Title in Category and Edit Title in Series which require you to select items from a combo box and then to press a button to get to the next step, now use Javascript to link the pressing of the enter key to the correct button.
• Choose whether or not to display authors in the series section. This feature also uses Javascript. A page reload is not required. The downfalls include that if you revisit the page you'll have to press the button again. I could have done this across the server, but I was learning some Javascript at the time and tried it first.
• New Preferences area! In this area you can change your email address, password or display name.
• Display Name was added to the database a long time ago. It doesn't do anything as of yet. I've been toying with the idea of making this display on tip pages. Note that the default display name is "User" (minus the quotes of course).
• Users section for administrators has been updated with Display Name data.
• New Login! The sidebar is now displayed on the login screen, verses making the page totally isolated.
• Login now puts a third piece of cookie data, your display name. I updated the database to say User for everyone's, because with an empty string login failed. Please contact me if there is a difficulty with logging in.
• Forgot password feature! If you forget your password you now have the opportunity for it to be e-mailed to your registered address. If you enter an e-mail address that exists in the database but a wrong password the site will present you with an opportunity to try again or to request a password e-mail. The request page will require you enter your e-mail again. This feature was created at the request of a user. Testing of this feature shows that the e-mails are sent from the JBrownell server within a quarter of a minute, so you won't be locked out of the site for long!
• No more proceed link on login page! You no longer need to press the proceed link to return to the site. The server will automatically return you to the Home Page.
• No more proceed link on logout page! Upon pressing logout, if it is successful (I've never had it not be) you are put back on the Home Page.
• The main URL: http://www.JBrownell.com/bks/ now puts you right on the Home Page as well. Before the URL would take you to index.html which had a META redirect to welcome.asp, but removing the index.html file will cause the server to put you on default.asp, which is now the main page. welcome.asp redirects to default.asp in case anyone had bookmarked that page.
• Tips area redirect. http://www.JBrownell.com/bks/tips now redirects to http://www.JBrownell.com/bks/tl.asp
• UserID field in the database. I think I've finally learned my lesson about linking everything in a database with ID numbers.
• I'll update the manual someday.
• The amount I've learned from this project just keeps growing!
• 07/29/2005
• Added javascript code to the login page to automatically place focus in the E-mail Address box.
• Some more style sheet (CSS) tweaking.
• 07/24/2005
• Updated CSS and header file to better reflect use of the CSS. Header links now display bolded while hovering.
• 06/13/2005
• Fixed bug on Add Category page that cropped up when adding style sheet.
• 06/07/2005
• Fixed stats page, the page wasn't referencing the external style sheet and therefore links were not properly displaying in the navigation area. Must have missed updating this page for some reason.
• Beta period over! Site was announced to both the vksvol-discuss and bookshare-discuss lists.
• 06/06/2005
• Added the handling of success and error messages into the style sheets. If you notice any irregularities on the site please let me know. I had to again update nearly all pages on the site.
• Browse by Category and Browse by Series now have acces keys! Pressing alt+C or alt+S will take you to the respective links from anywhere on the page.
• Created style sheet that now controls how links are displayed on the website, based on where the link is. This conforms more to the newer HTML standards and will make future changes easier.
• Added maxlength attributes to all Title, Author and names of Categories, Category Groups and Series. The max length is now 100
• Changed the request field in the admin (pending) table back to Text from Memo, set the field size to 250. With the new way of handilng requests and the current limits on title/author size, this should work.
• Extended size of Author fields in database to 100 from 50 to conform with rest of site.
• 06/01/2005
• Went all out and made a stats page, go check it out!
• Added how many entries are in each section to the home page.
• Added a line at the top of category and series display page that tells how many entries were found.
• Changed query statement so that the list of titles on the Edit Title in Series page would populate in the same order the titles appear when browsing the collection.
• 05/31/2005
• A need has been shown for series names longer than 50 characters, so I have upped the limit to 100 for Series Title, Category Title and Category Group Titles in the database.
• Beta of the site is to continue to the weekend. I've decided that I'd like to get a bit more coded and I would like to continue adding more series and categories to the site for initial debut. Keep up the good work Carrie and Shelley!
• Titles in bothe category and series sections can now be up to 100 characters long. Anything after that and the title will be truncated to 100 characters by the database automatically. Previously the limit was 50 by default, but when adding the Harry Potter series I noticed the ends of the titles were being chopped off, while the titles themselves aren't that long, the different parenthetical notes put it past the 50 character limit.
• Fixed small bug in header.asp
• 05/30/2005
• The apostrophy bug should now be fixed. If you encounter any more problems, please let me know.
• 05/29/2005
• Currently there is a bug in the system that will not allow apostrophys in entries. I'll be looking into a solution in the near future.
• Added a Keep Author checkbox to the Add Title to Series section. This checkbox can be used to "keep" the author name so that if you are going to make another entry by the same author, you don't have to retype it again.
• 05/28/2005
• Added Move Category feature. Updated pending section to include approvals/rejections. Updated the manual appropriately.
• Updated the order of the manual to reflect recent navigational changes.
• In the navigational area, Add Title to Series now appears above Add Series. This was done to mirror the Category section, just as the previous change.
• The manual has been updated to include Edit Title in Category, as well as additional Pending section documentation.
• In the navigational area, Edit Title in Series now appears above Edit Name of Series. This was done to mirror the Category section.
• Edit Title in Category and the accompanying pending section are now up and functioning.
• Another small cosmetic change in header.asp.
• Added a missing word to the error that is generated on the login page if an E-mail is not found in the database.
• Small cosmetic improvement to the site
• Finished work on the Manual for the sections of the website that are currently up and functioning.
• 05/27/2005
• Started work on the manual and ditched the how to section.
• Added code to header.asp to make the side navigation appear at the top of the page.
• Added "Edit Name of Category Group" page and added necessary code to the pending section to approve/reject these requests.
• Added code to pending section to check if an item had already been acted upon by another user. A problem could arise if someone was attempting to approve/reject an item that when the page loaded had not yet been acted upon, but at the time of their request to update had already been acted on. Confused? Didn't think so...
• Update to the pending section is successfully completed.
• As a result of the database change I will be revisiting how pending requests for Edit Title in Series are handled as well as some other code.
• Database change to include CategoryTitleID and SeriesTitleID that will function as ID numbers in each section respectively for each title in the database. I should have done this in the first place. This will now allow for unique ID of any title in the database, which will make it possible to add books with the same title if it is necessary.
• 05/26/2005
• Pending options now work for Name of Category.
• Edit Name of Category is now up. Will work on adding the necessary section to the pending page shortly.
• Added Filter to Series section. You can now choose whether to Show All (the default), Available Titles or Missing Titles. Hopefully this will shorten the list of any long series for people with a particular interest.
• 05/25/2005
• Fixed bug that cropped up when updating the validity of Position field.
• Added code to database query statements on add/edit pages that will populate combo/drop down boxes with data in alphabetical order.
• Fixed Add Title to Series where the position field could be left empty.
• Now once you Add a title to a Category, the form displays below the success message so you can easily add another title. This now works similarly to the Add Title to Series option.
• Slight change to order of code on Edit Name of Series page to include navigation bar after submission of form
• Revisiting how code is handled on Edit Name of Series page in preparation for writing Edit Name of Category and Edit Name of Category Grouping
• Fixed bug that cropped up in Edit Name of Series
• 05/23/2005
• You are now "Welcomed" at the top left corner of each page containing header.asp. Your email is displayed if logged in or Guest if you aren't
• Adjusted database queries on Category List and Series List to display alphabetically rather than the order things were added
• I've not encountered any problems with any of the registration, login or logout links (I've definately used them enough) and so I am declaring them a stable part of the site.
• Added code to Category List pages to return a no titles found message if the category doesn't have any titles in it yet.
• Fixed issue with Category List pages not properly loading
• Add Title to Category is up and functioning. Works mostly like the Add Title to Series page. You must enter live BookShare ID titles, zero is not an option in categories
• Add Category to group is now up and running. You cannot create categories with the same name currently, even if they are in different groups.
• Added code to header.asp to force the main content of the page to appear at the top. Before content was in the "middle" when compared to the navigation bar at the left. This seemed annoying when I worked with a screen magnifier and just weird in general.
• Category List is now up after I took a few hours respite...the code gets to you after a while *grin*
• Add Category Group is now up and functioning
• Edit Titles in Series can now be approved/rejected from the pending section by admins/mods
• 05/22/2005
• Changed the Request field in the admin (pending) table in the database to a Memo instead of Text. The Text type was causing requests from the Edit Titles in Series page to be truncated and thus not properly logged for processing.
• Pending page now correctly displays Edit Titles in Series requests, but can not yet act upon them.
• Finished work on Edit Titles in Series page.
• In the process of adding an "Edit Titles of Series" page.
• Fixed bug when error was generated from the Add Title to Series page. The series selected would not be the default. It is now...
• Renamed the Edit Series Title to Edit Name of Series to hopefully avoid confusion.
• Fixed bug where login page did not present an error if you were attempting to access it while already logged in.
• Made welcome.asp the main page. I did this so it could include the header.asp navigation and footer.asp. Added new inidex.html file to redirect immediately so old links will work and so the www.JBrownell.com/bks/ URL would continue to function
• Edit Series Title requests can now be approved by admins/mods
• It's now possible for Edit Series Title requests to be rejected by admins/mods - now to go work on approving them *grin*
• Fixed issue with Edit Series, which was still pointing to serieshead.asp instead of header.asp
• Added Other Sites part to header.asp, which offers links to both the BookShare home page and Rui's site
• Changed name of admin.asp and associated files to better reflect the purpose of Pending - updated header.asp accordingly
• Corrected small problem with header.asp
• Completed work on Users section
• Got rid of serieshead.asp as a navigation and created new vertical sidebar instead of horizontal. This new header.asp and footer.asp will be used on all pages of the website. I felt that separating the series/categories while everything else remained the same wasn't a good idea.
• Added Users section for Admins that will show users and allow for creating moderators, etc.
• Added Pending section that wil be used to approve changes to titles/series/categories already live on the site.
• Improvement to the logout page
• Fixed typo on main page
• 05/21/2005
• It is now necessary to login to utilize Add Series and Add Title to Series
• Added appropriate header to Add Title to Series page
• Corrected title on the Add Title to Series page
• Added login, logout and register pages, still undergoing some testing
• Added code to display message if no titles were found for a particular series
• Updated serieshead.asp to change the location of the Add Series page
• Fixed bug where series of no length could be added, ie. nothing was entered into the text box before clicking the Submit button on the add series page
• Eliminated seriesadd.html and now adding series is done through seriesadd.asp by posting the info to itself.
• Created serieshead.asp which will be used as a header file for the series section. It will make it easy to make changes globally in the future. This will be included on all pages to provide navigation in the series section
• Added name of series to the top of the series that is being browsed.
• Added this page on 05/21/2005