The home away from home for Newton users since 1999.
October 15, 2001
I’m starting to update the links section with a fresh batch of current sites. If you would like to have your Newton-related site listed in the links section, please send me the address and a short description of what the heck it’s all about. After a quick edit and squeeze through the spell-checker, I’ll be more than happy to slap your site on the page. No kidding around.
October 15, 2001
In the flurry of the redesign and a seemingly renewed interest in this site, I just noticed that the number of Newted Community members has crept up over the 600 mark. Thanks to everyone who has either dropped by to sign up for a new account, or just checked in again to make sure their old one was still active. Maybe we’ll throw a little party when we hit the 1,000 member mark… What do you say?
October 13, 2001
Well, that was a fairly smooth launch.
Thanks to everyone who has offered praise, hurrahs, and constructive criticism regarding the new design. All of it has been appreciated. Based on one suggestion, I have already made a couple of changes. Specifically, I adjusted the style sheet so that links appearing on shaded backgrounds are more legible. Just look at how open I am to suggestions. It’s incredible, isn’t it?
Several people have contacted me about volunteering to help post Newton news and other related tidbits to this page. I will be starting to add members to the Newted Community blog team as soon as a few other parts of the site makeover have been finished. Namely, the message boards.
And speaking of message boards, I contacted former Newted sysop Stacey Tenen for the last bit of access information required to actually get in under the hood. Suffice it to say, I now have access to the administrative functions underlying the message boards. Look out, kids. If I accidentally break something, please let me know.
October 12, 2001
A new design? You’re soaking in it.
I finally bit the bullet and launched the new design for the Newted Community site. All pages on the site, with the exception of the message boards (which have their own templating system and are a herd of ill-tempered beasts unto themselves…), have been rebuilt from scratch using standards-compliant HTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
What this means to you, the Newted Community visitor, is a much cleaner looking and faster loading user experience. Of course, because I used style sheets, the site will look much better in a browser that supports web standards such as Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape 6. However, because of the flexibility provided by using style sheets to separate the contents of this site from the visual formatting, the whole thing is accessible by any browser or internet access device – including a Newton.
And because the entire site can now be viewed in any type of browser, the need for separate low bandwidth pages has been eliminated. Not that they were getting updated on a regular basis anyway.
Other changes include the use of Blogger to maintain the news section you’re reading right now, updating of the support and membership information, combining all previously published reviews and articles into the infamous SoupBox section, and streamlining the payment system for new founders memberships.
As with any full-scale revamp, there are bound to be things that have been missed. If you spot any problems, please let me know. Your comments are always appreciated.
October 7, 2001
I have changed the way that the server displays the contents of directories which do not have a valid index.htm or index.html file. If for some reason you are having trouble browsing a directory on the site which worked previously, please let me know. A tip of the toque to Ben Truesdale, who pointed out that my original changes weren’t quite as transparent to the user as I had hoped.
October 5, 2001
After much fluffing about on my part, all outstanding requests for Newted Community membership accounts have finally been completed. If you submitted a request for an Newted Community account over the past few months, you should have received a notification within the past 24 hours. This message was sent to the email address used when you originally applied for the account. If you are still waiting for confirmation, it could mean that your original request was lost during the process of moving the Newted server from Florida to its new home in Calgary. If you think this may be the case, you can either contact me directly or resubmit your request using the appropriate registration form.
I am currently aiming for less than 48 hours turnaround on new account requests. More information (it’s slightly out of date, but I’m working on it…) about Newted Community membership may be found on the main membership information page.