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Topic: Viewing Forum on Dreamcast ?

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WildCard
rank 5
Posted:
Sat Aug 04, 2012 6:56 pm
quote : #1
profile : pm
Posts: 38
Type: NTSC-U/C
Didnt there used to be an option to load a DC friendly version of the forum ? I was using my DC for some nostalgic web browsing and wanted to check out and make some posts on the forum but i can't find the DC version option (there was one right ?) and the forum won't load in its usual form on the DC browser.

Am i crazy ? Question
 
DaMan
rank 28
Posted:
Sat Aug 04, 2012 7:08 pm
quote : #2
profile : pm
Posts: 598
Type: NTSC-U/C
No you're not crazy, WildCard. it used to be on the forum to switch, but now its in your profile edit under board style. might take a bit more effort to get to after logging in, but its possible.
  _________________
My PSO character stats are here
along with a few other sites I can be found at.
My DC is offline.
WildCard
rank 5
Posted:
Sat Aug 04, 2012 10:24 pm
quote : #3
profile : pm
Posts: 38
Type: NTSC-U/C
DaMan wrote:
No you're not crazy, WildCard. it used to be on the forum to switch, but now its in your profile edit under board style. might take a bit more effort to get to after logging in, but its possible.

Hmmm... one problem though, i can't login with the DC browser. Some javascript error comes up about unsupported java.

I'm using the DXP browser suite with the modified Planetweb browser. should i try one of the other browsers on the disc ?
 
lordnikon
rank 87
Posted:
Sun Aug 05, 2012 8:32 am
quote : #4
profile : pm
Posts: 5902
Type: NTSC-U/C
The site is locked to the primary PC based design. Unfortunatly the Dreamcast exclusive template had to be phased out and OC is no longer able to maintain a Dreamcast friendly way to access the forums here at OC.

A long while back, I'd say about 6 years ago, a phpbb2 security update prevented Dreamcast browsers from maintaining a session instance while logged into the site. Basically you could login, and click a few links, but after not too long you would be logged out. Also, as changes were being made on the primary site, the Dreamcast compatible code wasn't being maintained in parallel. The OC site design is entirely custom, written by myself. This is not some stock template that was just downloaded somewhere and installed. As such, updating 6 site designs (2 at each site, 1 for PC and 1 for DC) simply became too much work, and over the years I was unable to keep up. To maintain the old DC browser template meant I had to update two polarizing code bases, the DC browser version harkening back to HTML from the 90's and the modern PC browser version being all modern CSS with table-less layouts.

At some point in the past year or so I locked the site to the primary template so the DC browser template couldn't be accessed. However it may have become available in the past month as I had to re-enable the ability to switch templates due to the work I had been doing on the site since the start of July.

The internet is changing, and front end UI code is evolving to incorporate new technologies. OC's front end UI code gradually evolved over the course of 9+ years. I would try to modernize and patch parts of the site infrastructure as best I could under the XHTML standard but it simply got to the point where everything needed to be re-architected from the ground up. OC is now running on an HTML5 code base. This took me about 30 days of non-stop coding, a ton of redbull, sleepless nights, and bags of pretzels and munchies. Literally every single character of front end UI code was re-written since the start of July.

With HTML5 comes brand new tags like "section" and "article". These new HTML tags may not be recognizable by Dreamcast browsers. Also, the Dreamcast cannot read stylesheets. The Dreamcast Browsers simply are not compatible with the modern way in which site's are written these days.

There is one new advantage that our new code provides. The site is designed to breakdown to a generic Content Layout. If you have the Web Developer Extension installed in FireFox, and hit:

Shift + Ctrl + S


It will disable the site's stylesheet, and you will see a rather generic looking layout, just like a FAQ Doc/Readme. The site's overall design is disabled, but you can still read and browse the site. If the DC Browsers don't break the site when trying to read new HTML5 tags, the site may be browsed (but logging in may be a problem).

The only catch is that it will be rather bright with no color formatting. I can't place a global color setting in the body tag, otherwise the site will fail W3C Validation and other validators as well.

Someday I will experiment with some Javascript to see if I can sniff the DC's useragent, and write some generic color formatting to the body tag from a small script so the site can have a black background with dark gray text.
  _________________
I'm already numero uno on Dark Helmet's hit list...
WildCard
rank 5
Posted:
Sun Aug 05, 2012 2:53 pm
quote : #5
profile : pm
Posts: 38
Type: NTSC-U/C
I appreciate the detailed response.

But a simple, "DC browser is old, to much work keeping two versions of the site" would have sufficed. Wink I had already pretty much figured that this was the case anyway. Just hard to come to grips with the fact that every day the DC slips a little further into obsolescence. Crying or Very sad


Thanks.
 
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