Changelog: HPC:Factor Site, Engines & Modules

The original version of this changelog dating back to November 2006 was lost in the February 2007 crash. It resumes from March.

The changelog outlines changes to the Engine structure, API's and Modules (Indicated in purple) on HPC:Factor. It is not related to site or page content. The forums were not originally included in this changelog, for which changes used to be tracked in the Forum updates thread. In later years forum changes have been incorporated into this main changelog.

The changelog indicates bug fixes, new modules, major and minor updates and cosmetic enhancements.

If you have any questions about the changelog, or wish to report a new issue, please post in the Forum, ideas and bug requests thread for Forum issues or create a new thread under the HPC:Factor Related Discussion forum for any other site module.

Bug Slayer Badges
Any forum member who reports a (real) bug to me via the HPC:Factor Related Discussion forum or via PM (preferred for security reasons). Will receive a special Bug Slayer badge for their forum profile.


Changes for March 2007

2007-03-20
- Core: New Pegasus function; something akin to a section based banner rotator - but for internal promo. Will be released aginst the FP with the current BETA project cycle later in the year.

2007-03-28
- Directory: Category Listings section "titles"/category names now display in the browser title bar - should help search engine penetration.

Changes for April 2007

2007-04-24
- HCL: Huge bug fixed in the HCD "card" view. Multiple drivers attachment were coming up all over the shop. I have completely re-written the code for it, seems to be stable now - Test using search for "Wavelan"

2007-04-25
- News: Mag Glass icon added on the homepage news '10 item' read-out to link to stand-alone item view. Google isn't archiving the backlogged news content, hopefully this will help (argh, I modified the FP, ARGH! [hides])
- News: Fixed title bug in news output - everything in the news section was coming up "HPC:Factor News" instead of the post title in the <title></title> tags
- News: Fixed title bug in Printer Friendly news output (as above)
- News: News Archiver regression tested; new bugs removed
- RSS: Fixed catastrophic bug that was crashing feed viewers (Outlook HPC:Factor Today, IE7 were erroring out)
- News: Cleaned some flack out of the News database tables and performed full dB backup

2007-04-26
- News: New news stand-alone section displays the posters name (from the forum db) and the time of posting
- Pegasus: Improvments to the Date/Time aggregator function [Regression checked]

Changes for May 2007

2007-05-10
- Community: Fixed SETI / BOINC links

2007-05-12
- Core: Reorganised Sidebar modules for CESD so that comments is at the top
- Core: Fixed V2 error on all main content regions where white space didn't extend to the copyright bar (Finally)
- Core: Fixed V2 Opera anomalie which failed to draw the curve graphic on the section title bar
- Core: Fixed Firefox / Opera spacing error on FP Recent Forum Post readout: Now identical to MSIE

2007-05-17
- News: Fixed catastrophic regression failure on CDF channel

2007-05-19
- Core: Fixed DTD error in meta template
- Core: Fixed CSS error (W3C)
- Site: Added basic XML Site Map
- News: Fixed RSS regression error which was causing RSS viewers to return from cache instead of dB
- News: New Calendar View added (http://www.hpcfactor.com/news/calendar/asp). Now default entry to news archives
- News: 2007 added to news archive jump menus
- News: News section given central navigation module in site core
- Help: Revised Help index layout
- Help: Automated redirect added to HCL help content
- Help: Profile links added to contact page

2007-05-25
- News: Added search engine friendly page title generation to Monthly archive overview
- Core: Activated dynamic META description generation

Changes for June 2007

2007-07-21
- Domain: Due to search engine complications, forced domain redirection for entry points not equaling www.hpcfactor.com has been initiated using forced 404 redirection. Specific details can be found here and here.

2007-07-24
- Domain: Forced 404 redirection has now been replaced with Content Relocation (302) redirection having seen an improvement in traffic levels.

Changes for July 2007

2007-07-01
- Devices & Specifications: Devices & Specifications 1.1
- Devices & Specifications: Database store optimisations
- Devices & Specifications: Removed 0 based currency values from readout
- Devices & Specifications: Removed 0 based numeric values from readout
- Devices & Specifications: Removed all stray field suffixes from blank records
- Devices & Specifications: All devices given "In Production" / "Discontinued" status
- Devices & Specifications: Optimisation to Screen Visible Area script
- Devices & Specifications: Optimisation to Colour Depth and Screen Size scripts
- Devices & Specifications: Added additional processor information to CPU section
- Devices & Specifications: Fixed invalid tooltip notification of "Device Enabled" on non-equipped hardware
- Devices & Specifications: Renamed "NAND/NOR" field to "PSA"
- Devices & Specifications: Added field support for Maximum Supported RAM
- Devices & Specifications: Added field support for Screen Dot Pitch
- Devices & Specifications: Added field support for Cellular capabilities
- Devices & Specifications: Added field support for SD/SDIO capabilities
- Devices & Specifications: Added field support for MMC capabilities

2007-07-02
- Devices & Specifications: New Currency Conversion functions - Added Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
- Devices & Specifications: RRP/MSRP can now be displayed in either USD/GBP/EUD/JPY/CNY to match the native currency of the device's release (done at the time of dB entry based upon original issue price at RTM)
- Themes: v2.0 - New semi-automated engine introduced
- Themes: 640x480 section added
- Themes: 800x480 section added
- Themes: Content naturally expanded as ZIP collections have been inflated & removed

2007-07-04
- Core: Run-time function test for currency conversions using the new D&S functions. If successful, an in-line version will be created for CMS use.

2007-07-05
- Devices & Specifications: Fixed bug on comparison view where by CPU Clock speed's were missing the "MHz" suffix
- Devices & Specifications: Fixed database default value bug where unpopulated CPU detail was flagged as 0 on the read-out

2007-07-06
- Core: New centralised site to email 'interface' module - alll stand-alone module code will be updated to use it in due course
- News: News Submission system redesigned, installed into the new email module and give forum integration for registered users

2007-07-11
- Core: Internal Advertising module installed into core; tested OK

2007-07-12
- Directory: Link list output format mprovements
- Directory: Database Inconsistency Fixes
- Directory: Database extended to support exit counting
- Directory: Cache functions extended to support exit counting
- Directory: Interface changes to support exit counting
- Directory: New "Most Popular" links function with read-out on Directory home page (updates every hour)
- HCL: Search results output updated to support link exit counting
- HCL: Detail form updated to support exit counting
- HCL: CSS fixes to Detail Form
- Core: Extensions & optimisations to cache manager

2007-07-13
- CESD: Nostalgia: Fixed legacy content bug whereby legally formatted page titles read out "HPC:Factor v2.0b1" from the v2 beta, while the rendered page title displayed above the HTML content declairation

2007-07-14
- H/PC:Update: H/PC:Update RTM
- CSS: New Common Form Styles
- Directory: Recommend a Link interface modifications
- Directory: Category Selector Design changes
- News: News Submission interface modifications

2007-07-15
- Directory: Server memory optimisation in listing readout routines
- Directory: All listings now include exit count information (Visits)

Changes for August 2007

2007-08-04
- News: Fixed bug where by null month value causes page failure

2007-08-19
- Core: Two new HTML escape / construct functions
- Core: Added new limit & concatenate function to FP latest forum posts readout to correct bug whereby HTML/Unicode & HTML/ASCII escaped characters would cause character string corruption if the escape string was broken

Changes for September 2007

2007-09-21
- Core: Minor Style Guide Changes
- General: Private FTP System restored to functional status

2007-09-23
- Directory: Added function to display total number of Links in the Directory
- Directory: Added function to display total number of Exits from the Directory

Changes for November 2007

2007-11-30
- Core: Enabled Site Service Banner Rotation against the Forum for an evaluative test to see if it improves access through to the site's database services.
- Core: Fixed URL error in HCL link-through code path

Changes for December 2007

2007-12-02
- News: Modified main news RSS system to improve traffic intake: now only 200 words of a news post are offered and all links return users to the news aggregator engine on hpcfactor.com

2007-12-03
- HCL: Complementary modifications to reflect engineering work on Pandora
- HCL: Bug Fix - Loss of Sort Order when the page is changed has been resolved
- HCL: Bug Fix - Session time-out in more information card led to EULA redirect inside the popup, it now ends the session cleanly

2007-12-06
- HCL: HCD Data cards are now opening page content in a new window
- News: Code rewrite for FP listings to increase memory use and reduce database load
- News: Installation of caches for Front Page News Feed

2007-12-08
- News: Cleaned up record navigation for min and max news item views in the archive (no more 'next item' when there isn't a 'next item')

2007-12-13
- News: (Sub-module) FrontPage News Comments RTM
- News: Changes to the FP to support commenting
- News: Fixed a bug that was causing the cache manager not to clear certain RAM variables

2007-12-15
- News: Fixed bug in archive calendar view that under certain conditions could cause a data-view anomaly
- News: Modified FP news item processing routine with more advanced grouping conditions

2007-12-17
- News: Significant code rewrites and performance improvments in the main news RSS system
- Core: Variable clean-up
- Core: Optimisations to the side-bar generation code
- Core: Converted Sidebar "Latest News" to load from cache instead of database
- Core: Added Sidebar "Latest News" to the forum sidebar
- Core: Wrote a Submit News link into the "Latest News" Sidebar
- Polls: Completely re-wrote poll generation script
- Polls: Added cache control systems to poll module
- Polls: Significant database performance enhancements through SQL consolidation
- General: Restored Downloads to the main navigation - Themes is now classed as a subsection of downloads
- General: The Front Page will now load without any live database support providing the caches are credible - load times are now 75% faster

2007-12-26
- News: Fixed formatting anomaly on FP news caused by an unexpected iteration result

Changes for January 2008

2008-01-01
- D&S: Fixed '786' typo in 1024x768 resolutions
- D&S: Changed the screen resolution sort methods

2008-01-06
- News: [Bug Fix] Moderator edit permissions calculation error for news comments

2008-01-12
- H/PC:Update: [Bug Fix] Truncated HTML tags causing display errors on the aggregator
- HCL: [Bug Fix] Driver download availability missing under certain conditions
- HCL: SQL Optimisation

2008-01-18
- HCL: HCL Submission is now anchored to a database system, eliminating the involvment of email in the system completely
- HCL: HCL Now Support Update Submissions directly from the HCD page

2008-01-19
- Core: Updated the disclaimer tags to 2008

Changes for March 2008

2008-03-11
- Core: Re-evaluated w3c compliance on the FP
- News: Fixed logic discrepency that was causing stray HTML tags to appear in the code

Changes for April 2008

2008-04-01
- D&S: Added user orientated error message logic
- News: Added user orientated error message logic to Printer friendly
- News: Reduced white-space use on the printer friendly view

2008-04-03
- Toollkit: Addition of a new ANSI/ASCII Converter
- Toollkit: Addition of a new Integer to Binary Converter

2008-04-07
- HCL: Anti-hotlinking system rewrite to support new core facilities
- HCL: EULA system modularised to support multi-point code reuse and new coew facilities
- Core: Extensions to the hpcfactor.com cookie session set
- Core: Theme engine null pointers removed and replaced with user mode logic
- Core: Extensions to document interface display system
- Core: New membership sub-system layer added to kernel

Changes for June 2008

2008-06-10
- HCL: Bug Fix: Fixed an issue where by the HCD detail view would display broken manufacturer links

Changes for December 2008

2008-12-09
- HCL: Bug Fix: Fixed a security issuein the HCL submission system as reported by 'isotherm'

2008-12-15
- HCL: Bug Fix: Fixed a firefox related driver download issue reported by 'isotherm'

2008-12-20
- News: Added a counter to the news archive view to display the number of comments on each news post next to the post title

Changes for January 2009

2009-01-01
- Core: Updated site copyright for 2009

2009-01-04
- News: Improved the code for the News Article Print view

2009-01-07
- Core: Added 5th layer interface module to Archimedes (v2 Mode 4)
- Core: Rewrote the interface module parser to be more efficient and accept a functional logic stream
- Core: Added FP as unique navigation element sub-system
- Core: Added Isolation region module to main Pegasus interface parser
- Core: Functionalised Micro-navigation API
- Core: Cleared out 15+ constants from the session loader
- Core: Optimised Pegasus code, reducing footprint by nearly 400 lines
- Core: Modularised all Side-bar elements for Mode 0 - 3 loaders
- Core: Separated Mode 0 - 3 side bar 'elements' from side-bar UI structure
- Core: Extended Pegasus's cache scavenger to incorporate forum most recent posts
- Core: Deleted PD9 latest forum posts code connectors from Pegasus
- Core: Installed new Mode 4 UI artwork for VS-V2-Green
- Core: Installed new Mode 4 UI artwork for VS-V2-Green-Flat
- Core: Installed new Mode 4 UI artwork for VS-V2-Maroon
- Core: Fixed a firefox interface glitch
- Core: Fixed all CSS anomalies reported by Firefox debugger on the Forum Root