Vlasta's blog

The remaining mysteries

Just a quick blog post. Here is a list of what has not been discovered about the workshop items yet:

Set teaser tweaks

The way set previews are generated has changed a bit. This is not a big change, but there were multiple requests in the past to make it more predictable. This change affects both cursor and icon set previews, but in slightly different ways.

Scunkie and Ikeyyana have something to say.

Bulk uploading of icons

Another enhancement of the icon library has arrived. Bulk uploading was requested in the past and I had and still have doubts that this is such a good idea. But, it is true that the old system was very cumbersome and after serving for 15 years, it deserved an update.

SVG and PNG icons in the library

The icon library has for historic reasons focused on the ICO file format. That format was popular many years ago, but times have changed and these days icons are used on the web more than in Windows applications. And so, rather too late, the icon library on rw-designer is now allowing PNG and SVG files in addition to ICO files to be uploaded (via the web uploader for now).

Wallpapers and more

Since the update of the website a couple of months ago, there was a group of people complaining about the removal of custom user-made backgrounds. Today, I am starting a test of a new system, that would allow people to customize the look and feel of rw-designer much more than by just adding a custom background.

Next batch of updates

More updates are ready to be published. Or are they? One never knows until he tries (entomologist trophy is always waiting). The most visible change is a replacement of the old "People" tab with a more general page currently called "Mingle", but that may change if anyone proposes a better name. I have considered calling the tab "Social", but that sounds too corporately.

More website updates are on the way. In the near future, you can expect a slight modernization of the main Gallery and People pages. I actually do not like the term People too much, it may change. To be more concrete, the Gallery page will show active contests, and there will be new functions on the People page, for example the ability to find a person by their username.

Return of the Theme of the Month contests - part 2

So, the new TOTM system is now being tested. You will find the official announcement of the July TOTM in the Request forum.

Return of the Theme of the Month contests

Once upon the time there were monthly contests organized by willing volunteers. It was fun and I think these contests should return, this time with a bit more support from me.

Forum & Groups

This week, there was a minor change to the forums, something that was planned and missing. Also, since nobody has created a group yet, I'll tell you how to do that today.

A bunch of minor updates

It has been a month since the new web script was published, but I am still working on it and new changes are coming almost every day. Here is an overview of the more significant ones.

When you are above 150 karma, your karma wheel gets an upgrade.

If you want to add notification to your news feed when a cursor set or an icon set it published by anyone, you can now do that by subscribing to these news sources on your user-news page.

User icon updates

User icons were a controversial topic since they were first introduced on rw-designer. Uploaded icons need approval before they are visible to other users. There are rather strict rules on what is acceptable. Majority of uploaded icon break the rules and are not accepted. Even some of the accepted icons are borderline cases and may actually be disapproved in the near future.

Quick fact: While the new comment system still supports the smiley codes in the form of sequences of normal ASCII characters (like : ; ) etc.), it is recommended to use the unicode characters for smilies instead. And BTW you can use other unicode characters that the font used by your browser supports. 🌻 Just google them. But don't go too much overboard, if the character is not supported by all browsers, some people may not see it properly.

News feed news

For old time members of rw-designer, the changes to their profile pages were probably the most significant. There is much to be said about the new profile pages, but in this blog post, I only want to focus on one part of old user profiles - the news feed.

Quick change: the number of items that each user can offer for sale has been limited to 3. Otherwise, the flea market will be too messy. Attempting to add more will now fail, just think about what you really want to sell.

More about comment up/downvoting

Let's have a closer look on how comment upvoting and downvoting works. It is not particularly complicated, but I have noticed some misconceptions about how it interacts with the karma system.

One week later

As expected, there were numerous problems with the new web and I have been fixing them every day. Let's talk about some of the solved problems and about some of the new features.