I just updated MemeStreams. There are so many changes, its challenging to come up with a list. There are several major ones, and hundreds of little ones. This is the largest update to the site we have made in a very long time. The bulk of the update has to do with internal workings of the site, but there are a number of things that effect users.

* New Session Handling

All the sections of the site's code that handle cookies and user logins have been changed. This means that everyone will have to login again. There are numerous reasons for this change.

We are not doing much right now to track how you use the site that we have not already been doing, but the current changes are going to allow us to start doing much more. As we continue to improve the site, we will start collecting log information for user pages and make it available for viewing. Examples of this would be how many people read your weblog, view your profile, etc.

We take privacy concerns very seriously, and privacy rights factors heavily into what type of information we log and how we log it. We are not trying to be big brother. We take your right to privacy as seriously as we take our own. The purpose of our cookie tracking is to identify unique users of the site. That information is statistically valuable, and in our implementation it is kept as anonymous as tracking it at all allows. Whatever information we collect is somehow used to empower the users of MemeStreams, not take advantage of you.

User sessions with MemeStreams are now more secure. We have not had a problem with user accounts being hijacked, but its significantly harder to do now. In the future, secure logins will be available, ensuring that you can safely use your account from public and/or "untrusted" networks. (Donations to pay for a SSL certificate are welcome.)

* HTML/CSS Improvements

The use of HTML and CSS in MemeStreams has been on the verge of criminally insane. I can't think of much else to say about it then that. It was really, really bad.

If you evaluated our current HTML/CSS usage, there are still problems even after this update. However, the improvement is massive. Whatever browser you are using, you will see an improvement. IE in particular..

Neither Decius or I use Internet Explorer. We don't catch the subtle problems ourselves. We QA for IE, but not as much as we'd like to. Most of the site's frequent users don't use Internet Explorer either. Well... At least no one who ever complains about problems with the site uses IE. You IE people are damn silent. I personally theorize that users who use Windows are used to getting screwed on a constant basis and just accept a broken website, since they already have a broken computer. We never hear anything out of you. Its possible this has been because the site has barely worked in IE, although I prefer my theory. That aside, if you have problems with the site in Internet Expl... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]