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This is a noticeboard for all announcements relating to site and groupware systems, which do not warrant a N&N story. Click on the § to get a link directly to a particular story.

Information about MSIE 9

Although Mozilla Foundation, (developers of Firefox and Microsoft are quarreling over the definition of "modern browser", the release of MS Internet Explorer 9 is a significant event, it will mark the first time ever that Microsoft's browser has had reasonable support for Internet and World-Wide Web standards.

For the purposes of Vistua.com administration, MSIE9 is considered a modern browser. It has been tested and confirmed to work properly with all functions of this site and the groupware apps. MSIE9 will be considered an officially supported browser of vistua.com If any portion of this site/the groupware apps do not work properly in MSIE9 this is a bug, please file a ticket. MSIE has been semi-officially supported since version 8, per the Ancient Browsers policy but now MISE9 will be fully officially supported for the purposes of accessing this site. Administration currently does not recommend this browser as it remains to be seen if its security features have improved proportionally with its rendering-engine. §

Notice regarding Groupware Features

Starting today, Google has made it possible for Apps administrators to have new features added automatically rather then waiting until a "scheduled release". We will be obtaining new features and apps automatically from now on.

You will be informed if potentially disruptive changes approach.

A short (and very badly edited) video follows with Rajen Sheth a boring Google middle-manager describing the situation. §

Small Usability Tweaks

Starting today, you will notice a small rearrangement of the page actions. If you have edit permissions on the page you are viewing, "edit" now appears directly next to "Get QR" instead of being only in the Page Actions menu (which has been renamed "More Page Actions" for clarity). Additionally, if you are in any mode (including Edit) other than "View" a "View" link appears next to "Get QR".

These changes are Hub Version 4.1 §

New Graphics

Starting today, you will begin to notice some new site graphics on the following section homepages:

• Main
• Helpdesk
• Issues
• About

At the time of writing there are no plans to change the page graphics of the News section. These changes are being made to harmonize the site appearance with the new Elegance Layout in which the primary display typeface is Futura, not Gill Sans.

If you do not see the new graphics, your browser is still caching the old ones. Try holding [ctrl] and clicking refresh on the affected page. §

Elegance Switchover now Complete

The switchover to the Elegance layout is now officially permanent, the last remnant of the VOX3 layout--search results--made the transition today for a seamless site experience. The old layout is no longer available in any official capacity. We are pushing out cancellations for manual-override cookies, so users who opted to stay with the old site when it ceased being the default will soon see our new layout.

It will still be possible to view a precise archive of the front page in the VOX3 layout at the archives. §

Regarding EasyDNS and Wikileaks.

This has gotten to the point that we can't ignore it any more.

EasyDNS, The domain registrar of vistua.com and vistua.net has been added to the (resolution) delegation for several wikileaks domains. As a consequence of this, they may experience ddos (distributed denial of service) attacks, which are a type of Bot attack which may disrupt their systems.

EasyDNS does not handle resolution of the Vistua domains, they are only the registrar. It is not likely that the Wikileaks situation will affect the Vistua Network.

In the quite unlikely event of an outage, please go to http://twitter.com/vistua for updates §

Opensearch in Chrome Bug

This is now fixed.

There is currently a bizarre bug affecting the combined search/location box in Chrome as regards to Vistua.com. Alternatively, it may be there is a bug in vistua.com as relates to the box in Chrome.

One of chrome's best features is the ability to start typing a site address, hit tab and enter search terms that will be searched for on that site. For this to work correctly the site has to publish a small XML file called an "OpenSearch" file. Vistua.com publishes such a file and correctly signals Chrome to add it (view the source of this page if you don't believe me.) Unfortunately, it seems that chrome isn't picking it up but is instead attempting to piece it's own search definition together based on the search box in the upper left hand corner.

That' would be so bad except that Chrome is getting it badly wrong and the search leads to a HTTP 409 error code (that's a very rare error code by the way!) because the search engine server can't understand malformed request.

If you start experiencing this problem, as a temporary work around, right click the search/location box and select "Edit Search Engines". Click the "keyword" header to sort by site domain and locate Vistua.com. Click it and click "Edit". Paste the following text in the URL field, completely replacing whatever text is in there already:

OK and close your way out. We are currently investigating the cause of this error. § o

Introducing Large Print Version & Other changes

The hub now introduces the ability to set the size of the type in the main body. To do this click the "+" at the top right of the page, to go back click the "-"

The typeface used has also changed to "Segoe UI" (on Windows) and Helvetica Neue on Macintoshes. §

Introduction of Captchas

The hub will now introduce mandatory captchas for all edits. This step is being taken because spam from unfriendly bots is getting out of control. "Captchas" are a challenge/response authentication mechanism which attempt to prove that the user is a real person and not a computer. In our implementation, you will be shown a numeric code and asked to enter it.

Currently, the code is actual text on the page, we are reluctant to deploy "distorted image of text" captchas for several reasons, however this will be explored if necessary.

Example:

#captcha-jul0520100306|§

CSS will not Validate

The hub's CSS will not validate until further notice. It now includes several experimental directives including @font-face. Pleae do not file a PR.

About Section Beta

A beta of the new About section main-page has been formally launched and all visitors to that section are being reorganized there. That section has also been reorganized and enhanced. Please let us know what you think about this beta. For comparison Old Main Page

Vistua.com Scheduled Downtime

Planet to be Decommissioned

It has been decided that Vistua Planet will be decommissioned due to low use and a refocus of vistua.com site services. The switchoff will happen Tuesday, March 2. Until that time the Planet will continue to aggregate its subscriptions.

Small but Significant Preloading fix

We have rolled out a minor change to the hub template. Users may have noticed a small but annoying cosmetic bug in the navigation capsule. Sometimes, when you pointed the mouse cursor at an item, its background disappeared briefly before lightening like it's supposed to.

This is because the background-image that contains the highlight did not load until it actually displayed, the delay is caused by the time it takes to download the image-file to your browser.

This only happens some of the times because if the image is in your browser's cache (I.E. the browser has opened that file recently) it will load instantaneously. This problem is now fixed, the site will force your browser to download the image if it is not already in the cache.

This has caused the Hub version to advance to 3.3, as you will note in the footer below.

Testing Electronic PR

We are now testing an electronic PR filing mechanism, to test it please go to Reporting A Problem and click "electronically" in the "file a pr" box.

We encourage you to actively use this mechanism as we develop it. For test filings though, please put the word DUMMY in the "application name" field so that we know it is not a real PR.

As usual, comments to admin@vistua.net or dm @vistua on Twitter.

Consultation for Helpdesk Improvement

Administration is seeking feedback and comment for the Online Helpdesk, in particular for the following high-volume pages.

• Main Page
• Dj1400
• General FAQ
• CommonProblems
• Digital Television (DTV) (and all subpages for each brand of box)
• Ubuntu 9.04 Errata
• Mobile Phones

Are these pages complete? accurate? understandable? are there any sections you would like added (particularly to Common Problems)?

We would also like to know if you have suggestions for new pages to be added. To assist with this activity, either make your own edits to the pages, or email admin@vistua.com

This activity is being conducted to ensure that the Online Helpdesk is as useful as possible to you, during jzw's vacation in August.

Consultation for Portal Decommissioning

Consultation is now under-way over potential plans to cease offering the Groupware Portal. The Groupware Portal is a "start page" which allows customization of various modules.

Originally it included modules for Email and Calendar, neither of which are now working. Because of this, and the cessation of the product by its vendor, as well as other reasons, it is proposed that the Portal be decommissioned. An e-mail survey is being conducted.

Email, Calendar and "Google Docs" apps are not being discontinued.

The cessation of this product by the vendor is part of the evolution of the underlying platform "Google Apps" out of Beta, which was only just completed today.

Wiki.HomePage Locked due to Vandalism

The page Wiki.HomePage has been locked from editing due to repeat automated vandalism. It is thought that this page is suffering from vandalism because its URL is http://www.vistua.com/Wiki/HomePage.

On many Wikis installations the Wiki itself is installed in a directory called Wiki, and accessed there, Wikipedia's homepage is /wiki/Main_Page. Because of this, paths like /Wiki/Main_Page and /Wiki/HomePage are probably coded into the bots that are performing the vandalism.

For those interested: the vandalism does not appear to be spam, and consists of links to a page (hosted on the disreputable free host Tripod) with pictures of men using urinals, the Google homepage rendered in very old browsers and a cash-advance store. The text accompanying the pictures consists of mis-spelled references to telecoms company websites and miscellaneous pronouncements including this gem:

A quick Google search shows that "Fendahl" is a Doctor-Who monster. We couldn't possibly comment on the significance of this.

Vox III Launched

Version 3.2 of the Vistua Hub, using the new Vox III template framework and look-feel has been officially launched. Please refer to the News & Notes article for more information.

Vox III To be Launched Shortly.

The Vox III template is to be launched on The Vistua Hub shortly. Internal testing is still under way. Vox III is an evolution of the existing Vox II design with some improvements, modernizations and removal of markup structures left over from the old back-end.

• A public preview is now available for the Main.HomePage only. - jzw June 18, 2009, at 01:20 AM
• Astute users will note that the preview is now showing the complete removal of tabs. Tabs have been replaced by a "capsule" bar of links, why? Because the tabs never meshed correctly into the visual layout, the overall visual layout of the new (3.2) site is significantly more textural than the old (3.1) verison and the tabs were inappropriately "busy" looking and muddled the design.
  
  Feedback is particularly sought about the appearance and usability of the capsule bar, in particular, how obvious it is to you which section is currently active? The former tab-bar (which is of course, still in use in the "live" version of the site which at the time of writing is what you are looking at) uses an analogy with real-world tabs, the current section's tab is in the perceptual "foreground". Obviously this technique is not usable in a design that has no tabs so a different method, involving shading is used for the capsule. - jzw June 22, 2009, at 04:43 AM
• The launch will occur very soon, likely today. - jzw June 22, 2009, at 06:03 PM

"Advanced Search" changes

Upgrades to the VNS "Advanced Search" results page have been comitted and are now live The decision was made to separate its layout from the VOX2 templating system because of maintenance difficulties.

Organizational Changes

Organizational changes are coming shortly to the Main.HomePage and Support.HomePage.

The changes to Support.HomePage will entail the creation of a "capsulette" or "subtab" 'jump to' bar which will allow intuitive switching between views such as default, index, knowledge base, FAQs and problem reporting. The changes will also see a reorganization of the current HomePage into the "default" view.

A similar "tab-bar" will be deployed for the Main.HomePage to rapidly direct visitors to common areas.

• The changes to Support.HomePage are now live but have changed from the original goals. - jzw June 15, 2009, at 12:16 AM
• The changes to Main.HomePage are delayed until Vox III (version 3.2 of the site) is deployed - jzw June 22, 2009, at 04:44 AM