I'd like to announce a complete overhaul for the changelog system. As all if not most of you are well aware of, we've been keeping a list of changes in one topic, spread out over several replies. An obvious limitation with this is there's no easy way to jump between versions. What's worse, there's a limit to how big a single post can be, in which case the post needs to be merged downwards, taking time and effort to spread it all out and add the new changes to the first post. Plus I have to post in the topic when there is a new update to notify forum visitors whenever there is a new update.
I've had an idea for a revamped changelog system for awhile, but never pursued the idea until recently. I actually started the project on a Tuesday, September 13 of last month. The main idea was to create a system written in PHP that would have much more flexibility, but since I don't really know PHP, decided to shelve it until a later time when I did know enough PHP to be able to make the system. In the meantime, I'd have to make do with HTML. However, what I do have is more than adequate at this time.
Not only will this system let you jump between versions quickly, but you can read it a lot easier than you could before. I used CSS to format the areas where the changelog is written to allow easier reading from the rest of the document. I've also included an RSS file that you can subscribe to to keep up-to-date with new IDP releases quickly and seamlessly. That feature alone allows the ability, through the RSS Feeder mod installed on this forum, to automatically post IDP update topics any time a new version comes out. This even allows feedback too!
This system isn't finished though. I had an idea to generate comprehensive statistics for IDP, but only got so far as to release a prototype that can be viewed
here. The more I worked on it, the bigger the idea became. That will be released later on. There are some other things I want to do but will do them at a later time.
More information on the changelog system can be found
here.
