Last week we introduced a slideshow mode to challenges. It probably does not need an extensive explanation; it’s a standard slideshow with a set of features you can typically find in a slideshow. It’s still has a beta badge, and for a good reason. Within few hours we found (and fixed) several bugs of various degrees of embarrassment.

You may have noticed that challenges have always supported the Cooliris slideshow. It’s admittedly definitely cooler than our slideshow, but it has several disadvantages: you need a browser plugin, it cannot be as integrated with your application (challenges in this case) and finally it may have some distracting elements (such as links to buy stuff).

We definitely plan to enhance the slideshow in near future; voting and more image information, perhaps some UI improvements (such as full screen grid etc.).

As a side product of the slideshow, we introduced a 4000x4000 pixel limit on challenge images. We found that the Flash player does not play well with large bitmaps. Rather than working around it and resizing the large images to a size which Flash likes, we opted for the limit. The reasoning behind this is that: (1) this will affect only very small percentage of images (0.3% so far), (2) images of this case cannot be displayed on today’s screen (and screen in reasonable distance future) in full size anyway, and (3) we rather leave resizing on users themselves.

You can check some cool slideshows here:

• Worthless Made Priceless challenge
• Panorama challenge
• Macro Bokeh challenge  

Enjoy!

Our latest subtle improvement to the forums are keyboard shortcuts, probably doesn't sound significant but if you're a forum regular you'll probably find that the new shortcuts make navigating and responding to a thread a much quicker and easier proposition.  Additionally we've tried to keep the shortcuts consistent with those we've had in place for a while in Challenges.  The available shortcut keys change depending on the message you're looking at (and if you're logged in), there's a legend available at the bottom of the page:

Recently we've taken a little time out from developing Challenges & User Profiles to add a few minor 'nice-to-have' features to the Forums.

OP image indication
A photography-oriented forum is bound to have a lot of threads containing large-ish images, but those without super-quick broadband or the inclination to view other's 'masterpieces' would like to know which threads to avoid. Any thread which has an image in it's Original Post (OP) now has a slightly different icon (a instead of a ) with the number of images detailed in the thread's tooltip. Images in OP signatures do not affect the icon, only those in the message 'body'. Our approach here is deliberately subtle (many forumites are change averse) yet we feel it gives power-users the cues they need.

'Top posters' lists
We know that some of our forum posters are fairly prolific, but it's only recently that we've started publishing the numbers. We're fully aware that 'prolific' doesn't automatically imply 'popular', 'influential' or 'valued' but nonetheless it's interesting to see who's who in the zoo at any point in time. There are (of course) those who won't have a bar of it, but others have been quite positive. This feature is quite likely to evolve over the coming year.

Avatars in post headers
When the revamped User Profile pages were rolled out a few months ago we threw in avatars for the fun of it. At the time it was mostly an experiment, an experiment we're now continuing by including avatars in the header block of each forum post. We're using an independent service (Gravatar) to host and manage user avatars, which is neat because that way your avatar will follow you from site to site (amazon-conspiracy theorists can relax, Gravatar is a 3rd party service aligned with WordPress). Just sign-up with Gravatar (quick and easy) using the same email address you use for your dpreview profile and the magic of the internet will take care of the rest. Several thousand users already have already jumped on the avatar bandwagon, great stuff!

Enhanced formatting options
The stick that dpreview-forum detractors most often use to beat us with is the lack of bold/italic/underline support. Apparently this oversight tragically hampers the epic brand wars which are waged in that particular theatre. Well, those noble folk need detract no more (optimistic perhaps?) for these prized formatting options have arrived. Here's a quick run-down of the formatting new options we now support:

• /italics/
• *bold*
• ~strikethrough~
• _underline_
• * bullet list
• # numbered list
• ---
  signature
• email@domain.com

In addition to the classics (unchanged)

• quoter wrote:
  > quote
• http://www.link.com
• http://www.image.com/expand-me.jpg
• http://www.image.com/just-link-me.jpg;

Just in case you were wondering (and I know you were) we've deliberately gone with a non-html syntax (close in spirit to textile, markdown and many modern wiki syntaxes) for security and ease-of-use reasons (and because people are already using those symbols). There are a few other little undocumented behaviours I've thrown in there for the observant (I'll let you make the call as to whether they're features or bugs ;).

You can already use the new formatting syntax in your messages (many already are). However, the formatter (the bit which actually turns the syntax into html) has been completely rewritten and therefore probably has a few bugs. As such, we're going to have a short opt-in beta phase before rolling it out for everyone. To opt into the beta phase of the new formatter just go to the labs page and tick the 'I want to use the new forum message formatting' checkbox. If you do have issues with the new system, the best way to get satisfaction is to send a short message through the feedback system (remember to include the url of the affected forum message and instructions so we can reproduce the problem).

Bookmarking
Another neat feature we've added is the ability to bookmark messages and have those bookmarked messages available to you in a section of your user profile. To bookmark a thread or message, tick the 'bookmark' checkbox under the message text. To view your bookmarked threads & messages take a look at the Bookmarks tab in your user profile. We are planning to roll out notifications for bookmarked threads in the near (well, near-to-mid-possibly-distant) future.

Enjoy!