[IPB 2.1] ACP Permissions

Monday, July 11, 2005

I've finally finished this feature off. Hoo-rah.

I've renamed it to "ACP Restriction Permissions" as it better suits the way the interface works. Basically, any admin in a group which has ACP access has full unrestricted access to the ACP. This only changes when they are added to the restrictions list. When first added, they don't have access to any area of the ACP.

The restrictions can be at tab level (Management, Look and Feel, etc), root feature level (Members, Forums, Template Editing, etc) and at sub-feature level (Add member, edit members, add forums, recount forums, etc) or a mixture of all three.

This means that if you just want an admin to manage skins, you can do this at the "Look and Feel" tab level. If you also wish to only allow them to edit existing skin sets, you can do so at feature and sub-feature level.

I won't bore you with how it works, back-end and database wise; apart from saying the actual PHP sources are picked through for permission checks and the database is built up from that which makes developing easier as I don't have to manually keep a list up to date.

The front end is mostly javascript and Ajax. I think this is a good example of how Ajax can take what would otherwise be a complex interface and make it much easier. Without such a system you'd have to rely on a series of page loads and a lot more PHP work to save state between pages.

You'll notice that the sub-feature level rows are auto-saved when another tab or feature tab is clicked. There is an optional manual save which turns red when a change has been made.

acp-perms.mov (Quicktime .mov 4.8mb)

UPDATED (12-July-05: New interface components) acp-perms2.mov (Quicktime .mov 2.2mb)

UPDATED (Again: Added quick links to allow perms for entire section) acp-perms.jpg

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London

Thursday, July 07, 2005

I feel compelled to comment on today's events.

I don't want to add speculation, or claim to know all the facts. News is still coming in and there are no hard figures on the number of fatalities and casualities and it still hasn't been confirmed, at the time of writing, exactly how many explosive devices there were.

I feel compelled to comment on the wholly British way London has responded to the cowardly and shameful attacks on an unsuspecting public. It's often in such unimaginable situations that the real strength of a nation shines through. We saw the fierce pride and resolve that America displayed after the tragic 9/11 attacks and how the world grieved with the American people.

The British stiff upper lip is being throughly tested today. Eye witness reports are coming in from those who were trapped underground after the explosions ripped through the underground carriages. For the most part, people remained calm, removed the odd window for ventilation and waited for the live track to be switched off before being led back to a platform where the local church was handing out cups of tea. Such an ironic display of our national stereotype brings some comfort in another wise horrific time.

I can't begin to make sense of today's attack. Seeing familiar places, such as King's Cross, swamped with emergency services leading out the walking wounded is as shocking as it is surreal. The fall-out from today's events is going to be far reaching.

For anyone who has family or friends in London, I hope they are safe and well.

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Alpha, Beta, Gamma

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

I get some some perverse enjoyment from bug fixing. I think it's because I'm able to be very productive in a very short space of time. There's few things as rewarding as knocking off a few dozen bug reports before lunch. For the most part the bugs we get reported are relatively minor and trivial which allows me to whip through them.

So far, the IPB 2.1 alpha release has gone very well. I'm surprised by the low number of reported bugs but this is tempered with the fact that it was only released to our customers, and only installable by those customers who had the free time, will and zend optimizer installed. Even still, I'm pleased with how well its gone.

It's unusual for us to release an alpha. I wanted to make this release because of all the new toys IPB 2.1 brings and early testing of the client side scripting will save us a major headache later on. I could have labelled it a "beta" but, unlike some project managers, I prefer to wait until the feature set is all but complete.

I really don't think it'll be long before we hit the first "proper" beta release. The few bugs reported so far combined with the few sections left to complete should see a release within the next few weeks and I don't anticipate a very long beta testing phase.

All in all, IPB 2.1 is shaping up to be a great release and I'm interested to see what the modification community make of the new back-end code and components system.

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