Week Fifteen Site Updates

This one’s a day late, since Eric was away for the weekend (contrary to popular belief, we don’t have him chained to the computer). There have been about 215 changes since the last update. Most of them came out of your feedback on the new sheet layouts.

• Older Pathfinder sheets can now move to the new layout
• Checkboxes show checkmarks again, and text is black instead of grey
• Original style touches are back on about 45 layouts: boxed weapon slots, expand buttons on big text boxes, and column sorting

Outside sheets, wiki pages and blog entries are now in site search, and searches containing common words like “where” or “the” no longer lose most of their results.

Character Sheets

Older Pathfinder sheets can try the “new” layout. “New” is a relative term: the “Pathfinder [Experimental]” template actually predates the template called “Pathfinder” by a little bit, but it was one of our first templates that didn’t look like it came straight from d20 and so the “Experimental” label has persisted to this day. In the last update we said sheets on the original “Pathfinder” template would need some changes to their data before they could switch. That’s now done: since Wednesday, owners of those sheets see a banner offering the new layout. The old template keeps class and level in two separate boxes, while the new layout works out your level from a Classes & Levels list. So trying it combines them: a “Fighter” at level 5 becomes “Fighter 5”, and a class line that can’t be split cleanly, like “Fighter 3/Rogue 2 (Archer)”, is kept exactly as you wrote it. The banner explains this and asks you to confirm first. You can switch the layout back any time, but the class and level update stays; the reason why is explained further down.

After the first few intrepid users tried the switch and provided feedback, we fixed three things:

• Sheets with spells now have Caster ticked, so the spell page shows up. Sheets that had already upgraded were fixed too.
• Bonus spells land on the right spell level.
• Hair and Eyes go into their text boxes rather than color swatches.

Upgraded sheets also now calculate attacks, skills and carrying loads, which they didn’t at first.

Coming soon: choose your Pathfinder look. Many of you were very clear that you wanted the d20-based design, and with this change, you’ll be able to keep it. We’re currently testing the feature where Pathfinder sheet owners will be able to choose between the d20-style layout (called “Pathfinder”) and the modern one (called “Pathfinder [Experimental]”), on the same sheet with the same data. That’s possible because both layouts now read from one shared Pathfinder data model; this was the reason the “Pathfinder” template required a data update, to align information storage across the two templates. This is more than just a consistency update, as it lays the groundwork for something bigger: letting members design their own sheet layouts.

Checkmarks are back: Last week we said checkboxes still showed as filled or empty squares. They now show a tick again, as on the classic sheet, in light and dark themes. Thank you to the member who said the old blue checkmarks had become “soulless black boxes”; blunt feedback, to be sure, but exactly what we need to hear.

Original stylings restored: Several of you told us what the new layouts had lost compared to the classic sheet. We republished about 45 layouts on Thursday to bring these back:

• Text you type is black again, not grey. Six D&D 3.5 players told us it looked faded.
• Weapon, armor and shield slots on D&D 3.5 are boxed again, so they’re clearly separated, and other layouts got their table-cell borders back the same way.
• Big text boxes have their expand button back, next to the box’s label as on the classic sheet. The expanded editor is also much bigger now, and on a phone it fills the screen.
• Column headers sort again on D&D 3.5 and ten more d20 layouts: skills, gear and spells, where the classic sheet could sort them. Sorting only changes the order you see, so post chips that point at a row keep pointing at the right one.
• The “Generate Statblock” links that did nothing are gone. Use the forum’s own statblock feature instead; it’s more robust and automatically updates based on the data in your sheet. We’ve kept the statblock fields for historical purposes.

Calculations wait until you’re done typing: On the new layouts, calculated fields used to update on every keystroke. That caused odd results; typing “18” for Dexterity briefly counted as a Dexterity of 1, and one rule that fills a box only while it’s empty filled it from your first digit. Now calculations run when you leave the box, or press Enter, as on the classic sheet. Also:

• Changing Base Attack Bonus now updates the ranged and CMB bonus boxes and their totals immediately, rather than only after a reload.
• The unsaved-changes count now counts fields that differ from your last save. If you change something and then change it back, it’s no longer counted as unsaved. You can also click on the change count to see a list of the fields that changed and what the old and new values are, before you commit to the save.
• Changed fields now have a consistent highlight color, and that highlight is supported across all types of fields.

Misc fixes this week:

• Public sheets were showing blank for visitors who weren’t signed in: if you share a sheet publicly, it now shows correctly on the new layouts.
• Some people saw an editable sheet they couldn’t edit: anyone who could view but not edit a sheet was shown typeable boxes and a Save button that failed if clicked. Now they get a read-only sheet.
• Sheet owners have a Share button again, next to Save, instead of only in the Actions menu.
• Desktop windows between about 820 and 1,120 pixels wide cut off the sheet with no way to adjust it. They now get the phone treatment: the page can be scrolled sideways and the Fit page width button appears. On narrow windows, Save, Actions and the banners now stay on screen while you move around the page.
• An empty text box hid its typing cursor under the focus outline. You can see where you’re typing again.
• On dark themes, a thin white line ran above many text boxes, most visibly on D&D 3.5 skill rows. It’s gone.
• On classic sheets, the top of the banners was hidden under the sheets toolbar. Fixed.
• Across the whole site, buttons are now sized for touch based on whether you have a touchscreen, not how narrow your window is. A desktop window dragged narrow no longer gets oversized buttons, and tablets get touch-sized ones.
• If a save is refused because the layout can’t store one of your boxes, the message now explains what went wrong, and the dev team is notified automatically so we can follow up. Your draft remains saved locally, so nothing is lost.

Games and Recruitment

• Removing an applicant now ends their application: If a GM removed an applicant from the members tab, or the applicant left, their application stayed “pending” forever and they couldn’t apply again. Now leaving withdraws the application, and a GM removing them rejects it, with the usual notification.
• Applications rejected when recruitment closes automatically are now handled exactly like ones a GM rejects by hand: application topics are locked and the applicant’s follows are cleared.

Search

Wiki pages and blog entries are in site search: They’re now included in every search by default, and you can filter to them. Search now also looks at what’s written in them, not only their titles.

Common words no longer kill your results: When topic search moved to the new engine, a search containing a common word like “where” or “the” required that word in every result, while the old search ignored such words. For example, where campaign found 7 topics instead of about 2,700. This affected topics, games, recruitment ads and the Issue Tracker, and it’s fixed for all four.

A search box on the results page: You can now change your search right on the results page instead of going back to the menu bar, which on a phone meant opening the menu first. On a phone, the filter panel starts folded away so your results come first.

A privacy fix: Text inside a [private]...[/private] block with no names, an older form from the vBulletin days, was correctly hidden on the page but could still be matched in a search. We fixed the cause and re-indexed the 54,000 affected posts, so it no longer happens.

More moves to the new engine: Recruitment ads and the Issue Tracker’s search now run on OpenSearch too.

All searches now run against the OpenSearch engine, which means we can start working on the feature that was requested months ago: targeting search results based on where you’re searching from, so nearby posts, topics, resources, and forums bubble to the top.

Under The Floorboards

• Security updates: Our automated security auditing continues to help us keep pace with the ever-shifting cybersecurity landscape. We were able to validate our zero-downtime approach to deploying critical updates.
• A sturdier release process: More checks now run before an update goes out, including one that stops a release if our cloud setup doesn’t match what we expect.

Every Site Update So Far

You can always find all the site updates at myth-weavers.com/updates.

What’s Next

1. Pathfinder players on the original template: try the new layout from the banner. If you’d rather keep the classic look, stand by: choosing your Pathfinder layout is coming soon.

2. If you switched back from a new layout because of grey text, missing boxes, missing checkmarks or a cramped text editor, give it another look.

3. Try searching for a wiki page or blog entry, and let us know in the Issue Tracker if something you expected doesn’t turn up.

Keep on weaving those myths!