Battle Plan Consolidated - Web Page Updated

[Baak]

I've consolidated our Battle Plan and updated the web page. I'm not sure if people knew they could sort by clicking the column headers (most red text on the site is a link), but I made them change color and be underlined to show how it is currently sorted. I've also added little "external link" images that show up on most modern browsers.

ALL the OoH plugins have be categorized as such and included in the OoH BIGZIP (available at the top of the BP as always). This includes betas, since it takes to much time for me to manage them as "private" downloads, etc.

This way everything is more organized and available in one place.

I've also re-organized our 3rd party plugins into two categories: "Must Haves" (as before) and "Lesser Played". I've made the "Must Haves" smaller since these are definitely the ones we play most often.


In addition, I have removed the following plugins from the plan:

• Bushido Units - replaced by "Bushido Anywhere"
• Canyon Del Muerto
• Chalk Hills Redux
• Clue
• Dorfball Tagset v1 - replaced by "Dorfball Anywhere" (even when playing non-Dorfball-Anywhere on Dorfball maps we don't need it) - maps are left in the BP
• Gothic
• Leggo III Solo Tagset - replaced by "Leggo Anywhere" (unless we want to play on solo games but I plan to make a replacement for that soon(tm)...)
• MythWarrior v1.01 - "MythWarrior Anywhere" replaces this and the map isn't that great (we have much more fun playing it elsewhere - big plugin too)
• Shattered Earth
• Winter Conv Pak (have an external link instead)

I may add an alternate link for the BIGZIPs (and some other chunky stuff) in 7-zip format, since it definitely compresses further. This would be in addition to the normal zip links. Will just see how much work is involved as I am trying to streamline the whole process, not add more work.

[Baak]

Ok - I must stop now! Got inspired to add in some final touches and thought I better do it while I was in there messing about.

Wanted to have this for awhile (some major behind-the-scenes stuff to make it work): the last remaining stats I've wanted on the BP forever are now in place and I think it came out rather nicely. This will also tie in well when I reduce the OoH Downloads page to a series of OoH Plugin Paks (coming soon(tm)):


The "New/Recent" Status and "Date Added" is now combined into one field: "Updated" which shows new/recent automatically by how it displays the information: purple for new, light teal for recent, and a grey date for older ones (I like seeing how long ago some stuff was added). Cleaner methinks.

"Size" is now replaced by "MB" (since everything is shown in MB) down to .0 (less than 50k) with some color-coding for sizes.

New fields include "#DLs" (tied into the OoH Downloads page) and "Tain". The "Tain" field is updated hourly (so sweet!) and represents the number of downloads for the file posted on The Tain (if it exists). This number is a link to the entry on The Tain (handy!), while hovering the mouse over the link also shows the current Rating and number of Reviews in the little floating box. Heh. Note that I am only doing these for OoH plugins.

You can sort on all the columns as usual and for the web geeks out there the page validates as strict XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 - wanted to see if it was possible and it is! Dang.


I prefer the look on Opera and Firefox (IE7 won't show the BIGZIP dividing line properly - may have to fix that someday(tm)).

Fun stuff!

[Frumius]

Looks sweet in Safari 3.1.

I love all the info you have in there! Especially cool to have the Tain links and the floating info boxes! I'm not sure people will realize those Tain numbers are links, though, unless they happen to roll over them with the mouse. What if you put an underline on 'em? Not on all the links, like the actual plugins (that'd look ugly), but just on those Tain download numbers so they are immediately recognized as links. Just a thought; I love what you did and that may help people find that bit of niftiness on the page.

Wow, lots of ppl will have to re-download your AW Multipack when it hits 2.0 soon™!

[Baak]

Thanks!

Yeah, I think it kinda got pushed under by Road posting 6+ things all at once - including old stuff. Ugh. Although I really like a lot of things about The Tain, I definitely miss the format of The Mill. So much information available on one page - The Tain seems to hide this a bit. Just my opinion (I think shared by some of the Tain developers I've talked with too). One of those things - like everything - that takes time.


I've revisited the BP one more time and decided two things:

(1) The "#DL" now shows a combination of OoH and Tain downloads, since that's more interesting imo and means I don't have to post a third "total dls" column that really only matters for the dozen or so OoH plugins shown at the Tain (since those are the only ones I'm putting on there). The #dls is interesting (to me anyway) but always somewhat subjective because something can have lots of updates and look like it gets lots of dl's - still, I really like having the information available. Just a geek at heart.

(2) I understand the fact that the little number under the Tain column is hard to recognize as a link, but putting an underline there kinda tweaks it too much. What I've done instead is add the little "external link" icon next to these to give a hint that they go off-site. We can play around with that some more and see what happens.