It's nearly December and that means nearly Christmas and a host of our celebrations and shopping and partying, so before everyone gets too festive and excited - and is still dealing with atrocious November weather - I thought I'd cheer everyone up just a little.

Despite there being some interesting personal challenges going on behind the scenes, it's been a pretty busy time for us lately, and also to those who have reviewed what we're doing on Github and suggested things. We're not ogres (well, I maybe am) and if you got a suggestion, especially if they're ready to go with code, we'd love to see them.

But that's not what you're here for. You're here to see what awesomeness we have up our sleeves. It's all on Github, you can always check it out but while we're still in this heady melange of excitement phase, things may still be broken or buggy. Whoever controls the spice, controls the universe. That's kind of ironic then given my surname

Anyway.

* The first version of likes made it into the core for definite. It's still a WIP, as there are questions about it that we haven't solved yet - what permissions it should have being the biggest - and AJAX liking isn't handled yet but it will be.

* In the admin panel when you save things, there should be a nice message at the top telling you that things got saved now.

* Themes now have to state what version of SMF they're from. No more will you be able to accidentally upload a theme from previous versions that won't properly.

* The 'your forum is in maintenance mode' warning is now much more prominent so you'll know if you are or not.

* Random oddities in the theme got fixed, including a random multi-year-old bug in the admin panel as well as consistency and thematic improvements in some of the information panels.

* Guests were somehow able to be given permissions that didn't really work for guests.

* Admin/moderation logs no longer enforce the 'you can't delete anything in the last 24 hours' restriction. However, they do now have a warning whereby if you empty the log, it will leave a message saying that the log was emptied.

* Various of the admin help bits and bobs got better wording.

* On top of the admin area dropdown menus having icons, the profile and moderation areas now do the same.

* Reattributing posts to users also fixes reported posts.

* Sticky topics are no longer something you can enable or disable; they're always enabled (because I have yet to see a forum that didn't use them)

* The mail queue had a couple of minor bugs where 'private' emails could be leaked under very very specific circumstances, and would not always continue properly, which has now been fixed.

* The whole 'allow viewable email addresses' thing went goodbye; emails are naturally hidden as they should be.

* The package manager no longer has the 'latest packages from simplemachines.org' section, it didn't really actually help anyone, and was often a bit wrong in what it told you.

* When pressing the 'mark everything as read' button, you're now prompted before it does anything.

* A user viewing their own profile is no longer permission controlled, there's really no good reason for it to be - they're always able to see their own profile.

* Swanky new dropdown menu for profile and PMs. See attached pictures for more. Because we added these swanky menus, the profile and PMs menus are no longer in the main menu - they don't really need to be, either. So the menu is now more compact and more focused on the site (with the 'me stuff' out of the way at the top of the page)

* PM labelling got a major, major overhaul. There were a number of very serious holes in the original implementation of the way labels worked, namely all kinds of hidden limits, all kinds of weird performance issues and it got rewritten.

* When looking at the list of boards in the admin panel, there's now an icon next to redirect boards to let you know they're redirect boards.

* It's now possible for users to say why they're editing a post.

* Revamped icons for the front page board index. Additionally, by default guests now see the 'new posts' icon instead of the 'no new posts' icon. Might just encourage a few people to register if they think there's something exciting going on.

* The 'Loading...' banner at the top of the page when something is loading no longer has the 'close' icon on it. It didn't really work, certainly didn't do what people were expecting and there isn't a particularly good way *to* do that, so it went.

* Packages will now report (and sort by) the time when they were installed.

* The menu panes used to have this interesting and quirky misalignment of corners; you'd have one very noticeable rounded corner, one square corner and two slightly rounded corners. They're now all consistent.

* Improved handling for ImageMagick for some image handling.

* Child boards are now renamed sub-boards.

* It's now possible to limit where a user can move topics to. Now it's possible to let them move anywhere as they currently can, or you can limit moderators to moving topics only to where they could start topics themselves. (Of course, admins are not limited)

* Spell check should now support enchant (as pspell is being phased out by PHP)

* eAccelerator and Turck MMcache are no longer supported, they don't do what we need any more.

* Categories can now have descriptions attached. See attached. (This also shows off the new board icons by Gary while we're at it)


And this is just 3 weeks. We have plenty more to do yet. It's gonna be spectacular.

As ever, those who are trying it out, please do report issues on Github rather than here.

Wow, that's a big list! Looks like you're making great progress. Thank you for the detailed and very interesting report on how things are going, Arantor.

Awesome work. These updates are great.

Awesome work, Arantor.
Thank you for updates.

Now I know where all of the rum went. Rum well spent. 2014 will be a great year for SMF. Thanks for the updates!

Rum? I thought you were into beer.

I'll happily drink beer, but I enjoy rum more

Awesome 

Thanks for letting us in on all these yummy details.
even more for getting these tweaks, changes & improvements accomplished.


...Waiter, please bring Mr Arantor another of whatever rum beverage he would like.

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 26, 2013, 08:45:13 PM

As ever, those who are trying it out, please do report issues on Github rather than here.

Just reported a problem. Though not sure if I posted in the right place, never used git before. 

Another fine update, thank you Developers

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 27, 2013, 12:50:27 AM
I'll happily drink beer, but I enjoy rum more

I would post the link and the image again, but I think you already know it by now

Great job Dev team!

Meh, not bad for 3 weeks work.

Did you really need to sleep, though? Think of all that lost productivity

mmmm.... bits and bobs...

Quote from: lurkalot on November 27, 2013, 03:27:39 AM

Just reported a problem. Though not sure if I posted in the right place, never used git before. 

You did it just great and now the installer should be fixed

Pyrat rum is my favorite!


Excellent job, Arantor and others!

Absolutely brilliant!!  Nice one, dev team 

OMG! :O

Can't wait!

Nice one Dev team!

Great work by everyone involved.

Thanks for the updates.  Everything is looking really good.

Cheers.

Arantor
Rocked
And
Nocked
To
Our
Realm

and yes i ate the K

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 27, 2013, 11:17:28 AM

Quote from: lurkalot on November 27, 2013, 03:27:39 AM

Just reported a problem. Though not sure if I posted in the right place, never used git before. 

You did it just great and now the installer should be fixed

Thanks.  Works a treat now.  Works well, and looks nice too.  Great job. 

Awesome work guys

I really love the new board icons.

Looks cool!!!

Thanks Dev Team!!!

Quote from: meetdilip on November 28, 2013, 07:29:27 PM
I really love the new board icons.

That was the most important thing in the whole update? Wow.

@Gargoyle: Oh there's more to come yet

Can't wait to see!!!

My holiday work schedule and preparation have kept me from playing with the latest github goodies so its nice to see the direction its heading. Think I'll have to grab it soon and check it all out!!

Really nice, 2.1 now looks even more exciting.

Just installed the latest from git...

I likey!!!!

Ok... One thing...

I really really don't know where to put this as I do not believe it is a bug and the software is still alpha stage. Please forgive me if this is improper protocol.

The "Likes" system seems to not show the users overall "likes".. If 3 posts were liked I can't see where that info is displayed. I would think it would be like "bragging rights" so to speak... User1 has had 35 likes while user2 has none type of thing. Wondering if it should be someplace in the display.template area? Not sure..

Anyway.. apologize if this is improper. Please direct me to proper avenues where feedback can be given if needed.

THANKS!!!!!  Looks FANTASTIC!!!!

It's not a bug. It's not a feature. It's an acknowledgement that the likes stuff is a WIP and we're not sure what form it should take.

The problem with likes is that trying to have a total only works if you only ever have likes on posts. Except the system has no such limitation; it physically allows for extending without too much work onto just about anything else while you're at it. Consider, on that other forum I implemented likes for, you had a sort of conversation/timeline thing, called thoughts, where you could like them. Since you've already got two possible things to like there, what would having likes in the poster area actually mean?

Would it be the count of likes of everything you've posted? Would it be the count of liked posts only? I realise the questions are less relevant for unmodded forums but for modded forums (and believe me, in 2014 we're going to see plugins that make use of this ) this is more important.

Wait until the alerts tab actually has alerts in it (oops, did I just spoil that?)

Ah ok... sounds cool!!

I'm just speaking from experience with my users and they all love the "competition" of it all. Thats why I had to modify Karma like I did.. They compete. See who gets the most, etc...

I'm sure once its completed in "base" form there would be a way to pull the info if needed?? Or is it not "assigned" to a user so to speak? Either way I love the new design and features.

Alerts tab you say??  Hmmmm...

It's not assigned to a user as such. It's assigned to the thing that has been liked, e.g. 'msg 1, liked by user 2 at timestamp 1234567890'

This means it is portable to other things (since the 'msg' part is not set in stone and can be any identifier) and doesn't get into the realms of 'we have to update a ton of values if a user disappears' or 'we have to update a ton of values if a post is reattributed'

I'm glad Arantor is on board the SMF, as I've always felt that is where he truly belongs.

There are things that I have seen that I like, and there are things I see that I don't like.

Things I Don't Like:

1.| The Menus.
2.| Removal Of The Admin Sidebar - My Dear Old Friend.
3.| Admin Homepage - WTF?
4.| All the UI Hover Effects, As Hover Effects Should Be Purely Cosmetic.
5.| The Overall Theme - Looks A Decade Old

Things I Do Like(pretty much everything else, but notably):

1.| Cleanup Of Redundant/Unnecessary Permissions - and I hope this continues further.
2.| Theme SMF Version Checker
3.| Spell Checker Update
4.| The Removal Of Outdated Systems Such As: eAccelerator, etc.
5.| Category Descriptions.
6.| Likes
7.| Admin & Moderate Alert Counts In Main Menu
8.| Ditching "Core Features" Page.

Then Of Course:
9.| Drafts
10.| SCEditor - which I love BTW.

Suggestions:

1.| Rename "Admin" to "Manage" in the main menu.
2.| Admin Homepage Makeover: why have an additional navigation on the admin homepage? There should be reports, charts, and graphs to summarize use of site, and stats; such as: most online today, new users, total members,  total page view count, Total likes count, total post count, total bans, total warnings, total categories, total boards, total child boards, total subscriptions, total "report to moderator, total males, total females, total members in various post groups, so on and so forth(helps with website administration & marketing). Charts & graphs could illustrate  today compared to month, compared to year, compared to previous year. Or basically, the admin homepage should be a summarization of reports, while the reports page calls for full printable reports.

My Take

I'm glad to see SMF moving forward as I feared it was dead. Now that Arantor is on board the Dev team, I'm actually considering trying to help out by making the default theme responsive, which I'm 100% positive I can do, but not 100% positive that I have the time to commit to finish work. Actually to be truthful, I've already played with it, and the only thing I've found that cannot retain it's layout/appearance responsibly, is the sub-boards. All tables would have to be replaced with div's or lists, but can retain it's current appearance. Then again, this is supporting only IE9+...

Dev Team: keep up the good work.

I'm loving the UI changes.

Telling us what you don't like isn't helpful. Telling us *why* you don't like it would be infinitely more useful because "I don't like that" doesn't tell us what should be improved.

Which menus don't you like? There are multiple things that come under the definition of 'menus'. What don't you like about them? What, in your opinion, should be done to improve them? (No, removing them doesn't count.)

The sidebar went for multiple reasons, as previously explained and I'm absolutely happy with the fact they went - because we made sure there were alternatives of navigation.

The admin page revamp... more people like it than don't, and I'm happy with that. You can always change it if you don't like it, but again what would you put there instead?

The hover effects are mostly purely cosmetic. The menus are slightly different now and not purely CSS based - and are actually more usable than SMF 2.0's for that exact reason.

The theme 'looks a decade old'... no it doesn't. That wasn't the style a decade ago (I remember it well) But remember that we have to keep the default theme relatively bland (to a point) as a canvas for being built upon.


1. That would imply combining the two menus which isn't going to happen at this stage. I'm not saying it won't happen but they do different things, go to different places and it is not particularly logical to combine *those*. You have different tasks for admin and for moderation.

2. Partly because the sidebar went and partly because there was *already one there that was much the same*. Look back at 2.0's, you'll see the block further down of 8 items with big icons and descriptions. We deliberately expanded upon that to cover off the lack of sidebar. The biggest advantage of the sidebar was discoverability and we not only revamped the admin front page, we also made sure to *always* list the disabled features.

I've seen other forum platforms that do this and I find it largely useless - if I want it, I'll look it up. XenForo doesn't do it (has a few stats but nothing particularly useful), IPB does it and I find it just distracts me from getting to do what I need to do.

QuoteAll tables would have to be replaced with div's or lists, but can retain it's current appearance. Then again, this is supporting only IE9+...

There are two problems here. One is that we need to continue supporting IE8, and the other more important one is that there are quite a few things that are actually tabular data that shouldn't be changed. The various logs, amongst other things.

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 29, 2013, 02:37:32 PM
Telling us what you don't like isn't helpful. Telling us *why* you don't like it would be infinitely more useful because "I don't like that" doesn't tell us what should be improved.

I thought I did this somewhat, but I guess I need to clarify.

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 29, 2013, 02:37:32 PM
Which menus don't you like? There are multiple things that come under the definition of 'menus'. What don't you like about them? What, in your opinion, should be done to improve them? (No, removing them doesn't count.)

Menu's should expand down, not have a dropdown hover effect.

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 29, 2013, 02:37:32 PMThe sidebar went for multiple reasons, as previously explained and I'm absolutely happy with the fact they went - because we made sure there were alternatives of navigation.

Other than the "security reason", I see no reason why it should have been removed. However, I know bringing this up isn't even really debatable, so no use in discussing it. I was merely mentioning it was preferred.

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 29, 2013, 02:37:32 PMThe admin page revamp... more people like it than don't, and I'm happy with that. You can always change it if you don't like it, but again what would you put there instead?

Quote from: Xarcell on November 29, 2013, 12:48:52 PM
2.| Admin Homepage Makeover: why have an additional navigation on the admin homepage? There should be reports, charts, and graphs to summarize use of site, and stats; such as: most online today, new users, total members,  total page view count, Total likes count, total post count, total bans, total warnings, total categories, total boards, total child boards, total subscriptions, total "report to moderator, total males, total females, total members in various post groups, so on and so forth(helps with website administration & marketing). Charts & graphs could illustrate  today compared to month, compared to year, compared to previous year. Or basically, the admin homepage should be a summarization of reports, while the reports page calls for full printable reports.

You've already answered this.

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 29, 2013, 02:37:32 PM
The theme 'looks a decade old'... no it doesn't. That wasn't the style a decade ago (I remember it well) But remember that we have to keep the default theme relatively bland (to a point) as a canvas for being built upon.

Saying 10 years might be an exaggeration, but in truth maybe a 7 year old design. I know this because I was designing themes that looked better than this 7 years ago.

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 29, 2013, 02:37:32 PM
I've seen other forum platforms that do this and I find it largely useless - if I want it, I'll look it up. XenForo doesn't do it (has a few stats but nothing particularly useful), IPB does it and I find it just distracts me from getting to do what I need to do.

Having experience in business development, I KNOW this would be useful. It's a matter of knowing what to do with the information. I don't think it's fair to knock it because YOU find it useless when countless others would. However, what is fair is not having the time or desire to code it. Which is fine by me... 

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 29, 2013, 02:37:32 PM
There are two problems here. One is that we need to continue supporting IE8, and the other more important one is that there are quite a few things that are actually tabular data that shouldn't be changed. The various logs, amongst other things.

Maybe I should have said it differently. Table HTML needs to be replaced with div's and lists, and Table CSS should be applied. No tabular loss here. In other words, make use of: display:table, display:table-row, and display:table-cell. Tables are not responsive. Maybe adaptive, but in no way responsive. You cannot hope to have a responsive theme and still support vast tables.

Another thing is, responsive design it is possible for IE8 with the use of respond.js. However, I was merely mentioning it could be done for IE9+ as it is without the JS. It's also possible without even the JS, but would require more work than I care to do. I reckon it would be best to leave this to someone who is more qualified.

I know offering suggestions at this point is really futile, because SMF is so far behind in development that the developers will be busy for quite awhile.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

A lot of these things are "Personal opinions" things, though, Xarcell, don't you think?

What's good for some, will be pants, for someone else.

Also, it's often a case of simply preferring something done, in a certain way, simply because you're used to it, innit?

There's no pleasing everyone and, sadly, some people can't be pleased, whatever you do.

QuoteMenu's should expand down, not have a dropdown hover effect.

Are they not expanding down then?

QuoteOther than the "security reason", I see no reason why it should have been removed. However, I know bringing this up isn't even really debatable, so no use in discussing it. I was merely mentioning it was preferred.

Other than the security issue, there are significant translation issues and there are issues with other navigation (e.g. the search function in the admin panel that now appears everywhere in the admin panel rather than just the first page)

QuoteSaying 10 years might be an exaggeration, but in truth maybe a 7 year old design. I know this because I was designing themes that looked better than this 7 years ago.

It's funny, then, that SMF 1.1.x was considered fresh when it came out... 7 years ago.

QuoteI don't think it's fair to knock it because YOU find it useless when countless others would. However, what is fair is not having the time or desire to code it. Which is fine by me...

I don't know anyone who has requested it for SMF other than you.

QuoteMaybe I should have said it differently. Table HTML needs to be replaced with div's and lists, and Table CSS should be applied. No tabular loss here. In other words, make use of: display:table, display:table-row, and display:table-cell. Tables are not responsive. Maybe adaptive, but in no way responsive. You cannot hope to have a responsive theme and still support vast tables.

So you want to take tabular data and not use tabular markup for it. How is that semantically correct?

I'm not disputing that some things should become non-tabular in mark-up, but using tabular mark-up for tabular data (like the logs) seems the most appropriate thing, no?

Mind you, I'm personally not a huge fan of responsive. All it means you end up doing is spitting out the same mark-up and doing all the same processing, only to proceed to hide half the data afterwards.

Would it not be better to have a dedicated theme that didn't fetch or process or output that data to start with? You wouldn't just get the usability benefits, but you'd get other performance benefits and so on.

QuoteAnother thing is, responsive design it is possible for IE8 with the use of respond.js. However, I was merely mentioning it could be done for IE9+ as it is without the JS. It's also possible without even the JS, but would require more work than I care to do. I reckon it would be best to leave this to someone who is more qualified.

You're more qualified than I am when it comes to themes. I'm a 'make it work' kind of guy, not a 'make it pretty' kind of guy.

QuoteI know offering suggestions at this point is really futile, because SMF is so far behind in development that the developers will be busy for quite awhile.

And that sort of "encouragement" is also really futile. No-one is denying that we're behind, and we're working hard to try and catch up - but it's not easy when we're already having trouble making the time for it around our other commitments, and anyone who contributes is going to help that along. Sitting on the side just suggesting things is great - it helps us figure out how to improve it, and in what direction.

But in absence of people actually contributing, the dev team has to pick a path and run with it. I'm sorry that we can't build your perfect forum software. But we have to build what we believe is the best base package for people to play with, and that means accepting we're going to upset people. I am well aware that there are people unhappy with the changes I have made in 2.1, but I believe more people will be happy than will be made unhappy with it; to me this represents an improvement. I just have to upset the least number of people.

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 29, 2013, 04:11:32 PM

And that sort of "encouragement" is also really futile. No-one is denying that we're behind, and we're working hard to try and catch up - but it's not easy when we're already having trouble making the time for it around our other commitments, and anyone who contributes is going to help that along. Sitting on the side just suggesting things is great - it helps us figure out how to improve it, and in what direction.

But in absence of people actually contributing, the dev team has to pick a path and run with it. I'm sorry that we can't build your perfect forum software. But we have to build what we believe is the best base package for people to play with, and that means accepting we're going to upset people. I am well aware that there are people unhappy with the changes I have made in 2.1, but I believe more people will be happy than will be made unhappy with it; to me this represents an improvement. I just have to upset the least number of people.

I'm sorry if what I said came across as negative, or if it sounded like an insult to anyone on the SMF Dev team. That was not my intentions. I guess what I'm trying to say that it's OK if my suggestions are pushed to the side or taken with a grain of salt. If the Dev team play around with ideas all day long, then how much work actually get's done? I'd much rather SMF get caught up first.

Where I see ideas for improvement, I can't help myself to keep my mouth shut. Call it a flaw, or call it a gift, I don't care.

As far as contributing to code or design, I can't really contribute can I? It's been made quite clear that what I would like to do with SMF, is unwanted and that's ok. I see your reasoning. So where does that leave us?

For the record, I have more HAPPY with the changes than I am UNHAPPY and I'm not saying anyone implied otherwise. I just want to be clear on it. So the first person that says Xarcell is completely unhappy with the changes with 2.1, will get a swift kick in the butt. or I'll mail you a rotten donut.

Quote from: K@ on November 29, 2013, 04:01:42 PM
A lot of these things are "Personal opinions" things, though, Xarcell, don't you think?

Yes they are, including the Dev's.

Quote from: K@ on November 29, 2013, 04:01:42 PM
What's good for some, will be pants, for someone else.

Yep.

Quote from: K@ on November 29, 2013, 04:01:42 PM
Also, it's often a case of simply preferring something done, in a certain way, simply because you're used to it, innit?

Not always. Half the time it is based on logic, statistics, marketing research, and trail & error. If it hasn't been done on a forum before, yet it is suggested, how can it be implied it is a preferred way of doing things?

Quote from: K@ on November 29, 2013, 04:01:42 PM
There's no pleasing everyone and, sadly, some people can't be pleased, whatever you do.

Very true.

QuoteWhere I see ideas for improvement, I can't help myself to keep my mouth shut. Call it a flaw, or call it a gift, I don't care.

As far as contributing to code or design, I can't really contribute can I? It's been made quite clear that what I would like to do with SMF, is unwanted and that's ok. I see your reasoning. So where does that leave us?

If it's a legitimate improvement, make it anyway. Because even if I personally don't like the *idea* of it, I might be swayed upon *seeing* it. And even if I don't like it, I'm just one person, and I can be overruled if a lot of people disagree with me. That's the thing... I'm not really here to indulge my ego, I'm here to build SMF - which is for everyone, of which I'm only one user.

Ultimately what it comes down to is if someone wants me to build it, I need to be convinced of the benefit to invest my time in doing it. If someone else builds it, I'm *immediately* more receptive to it because the biggest timesink is not my problem.

QuoteFor the record, I have more HAPPY with the changes than I am UNHAPPY and I'm not saying anyone implied otherwise. I just want to be clear on it. So the first person that says Xarcell is completely unhappy with the changes with 2.1, will get a swift kick in the butt. or I'll mail you a rotten donut.

That's largely my take on it as well I hear your concerns, but in the scheme of things they were better changes than the alternatives - like the admin panel overhaul, we've had a few complaints and a lot more people happy with it. Some of the comments were actually kind of rude, too.

QuoteNot always. Half the time it is based on logic, statistics, marketing research, and trail & error. If it hasn't been done on a forum before, yet it is suggested, how can it be implied it is a preferred way of doing things?

Exactly. This is why I'm always going to listen when someone has done it and can show me, rather than trying to convince me of the hypothetical benefit before I do so.

I'm much happier implementing an alerts system now I've seen it in practice in a number of places, for example.

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 29, 2013, 09:58:11 AM
It's not assigned to a user as such. It's assigned to the thing that has been liked, e.g. 'msg 1, liked by user 2 at timestamp 1234567890'

This means it is portable to other things (since the 'msg' part is not set in stone and can be any identifier) and doesn't get into the realms of 'we have to update a ton of values if a user disappears' or 'we have to update a ton of values if a post is reattributed'

Makes a lot of sense... Thank you for the clarification!

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 29, 2013, 04:47:52 PM
Ultimately what it comes down to is if someone wants me to build it, I need to be convinced of the benefit to invest my time in doing it. If someone else builds it, I'm *immediately* more receptive to it because the biggest timesink is not my problem.

Fair enough.

Just a quick ? for Arantor

Should the latest git zip have a Settings_bak.php file included in it?  Just I went to install it, and it asked me to make the Settings_bak.php writable.  Then I realised there wasn't one.  Added it from one of the earlier zips and it installed fine.

Sorry for asking here, just I didn't want to report it on git if it wasn't supposed to be included. 

You have to make your own Settings_bak.php by creating a copy of Settings.php and renaming it 

Quote from: ChalkCat on December 01, 2013, 09:28:07 AM
You have to make your own Settings_bak.php by creating a copy of Settings.php and renaming it 

Thanks, that's strange, because I've installed 2.1 many times from those github zips without having to do this.  Just the zip I downloaded today seems to play up.

Edited to correct my stupidity. 

2.0 has never been on GitHub as for 2.1 nothing has changed with regard to Settings_bak.php lately.

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on December 01, 2013, 11:00:21 AM
2.0 has never been on GitHub as for 2.1 nothing has changed with regard to Settings_bak.php lately.

Arantor, Thanks for pointing out my typo. 

So you are saying is always been missing from the github zip?  Why did I not have to create a Settings_bak.php when installing it before, (such as from the November update post)? Not a big issue, as it's easily sorted out, but I'm now very curious. 

I didn't create one when I installed from GitHub a few days ago...

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on December 01, 2013, 11:29:03 AM
I didn't create one when I installed from GitHub a few days ago...

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on December 01, 2013, 11:29:03 AM
I didn't create one when I installed from GitHub a few days ago...

Ok, apologies all round, sorry.   It must have been the silly freehost I was testing it on. (I knew I shouldn't have tried it)  When installing it asked me to make the Settings_bak.php writable, but couldn't because it wasn't there.  Added the file via ftp and it installed fine.

Just installed in Xampp again. and it installed perfectly, and created a Settings_bak.php file by itself as expected.

well when i copied emanuele's how to on installing 2.1 from github he said to create the settings_bak.php file...

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Contributing_to_SMF#Missing_files

Quote from: Illori on December 01, 2013, 12:47:17 PM
well when i copied emanuele's how to on installing 2.1 from github he said to create the settings_bak.php file...

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Contributing_to_SMF#Missing_files

Thanks for that link, hadn't seen it before.

I'd only ever tested 2.1 locally in Xampp before today, and like said it installed and created a settings_bak.php file automatically somehow.  Then today I tried it on a freebie hosted server, and was expecting it to do the same.   I know now, thanks.

I really like the changes; 2.1 is looking to be a significant improvement.  I've been looking at Github nearly every day to see what's happening.

Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 26, 2013, 08:45:13 PM
* Swanky new dropdown menu for profile and PMs. See attached pictures for more. Because we added these swanky menus, the profile and PMs menus are no longer in the main menu - they don't really need to be, either. So the menu is now more compact and more focused on the site (with the 'me stuff' out of the way at the top of the page)

One suggestion - since the user info has been moved, why not move the Login/Logout/Register as well ? They now seem a bit out of place in the main menu.

Login and Register should be linked in the header anyway, and Logout is on the main menu because it would be problematic to move it - if it were on the popup, users without JavaScript would not be able to log out.

and those options should *ALWAYS* be in the main menu of any site...  IMO

I can see an argument for moving them, just as I can for leaving them as they are... themes aren't prevented from doing different things though

quite so

I know at least one of DzinerStudio's themes does so, IceCube splits off the register+login/logout button off the menu and into the panel below the menu, which I personally like a lot.

Thanks.  You are correct; a custom theme or a mod can make that an option.  To the point you've made often - keep it simple, and if users want to modify it, they can.

Fairplay to all the dev team, excellent work as always.