The News System had a significant rewrite on the backend. It looks identical. The technical change was a shift from using PHP to craft an individualized page to having it send a news dump. By reducing the complexity of the PHP code, the page is created faster. Javascript replaces the PHP for drawing the News section. The weather section starts loading sooner. Total page load is about 0.2 seconds faster. May not seem like much: it's 30% faster…
The Search function has now been moved from many different and inconsistent places. It now appears in the header, by the date and time. Click the magnifying glass to switch between an internet search and a site search (just brianjd.com). It will default to an internet search... that's probably what you want…
The Site Authentication has been optimized and rewritten as a module. This simplifies management of the site - with a minor speedup. The Weather System has always allowed searching by city, but now it handles "city, state" as well. The "more quotes" page now has 15 random quotes, and a quote search function. The News System has improved the time display in the list, and has an auto reload feature. By default, it will auto update the news articles every ten minutes. This setting is configurable. The Home Page and News System both have improved image preloading on them…
The News System has undergone another modest update. The search is now always visible. The tool icons were updated. Articles that were opened now remain open when searching and refreshing news. There is a Close button on the right side of any opened articles. The "Please Wait..." dialog is nicer. The article count is now at the bottom of the display. I have more changes planned... :D
The home page has been completely redesigned. The search engine is back to Google. Site news from the Forum has also been added. What do you think of the changes?
