December 2013 Website Changes and Updates

[Mike]

Greetings, once again!

As of late, we have updated PHP to the latest minor revision. This is an upgrade to 5.4.22 from 5.4.21. PHP, of course, is the server-side hypertext processor used by most websites. The type of under-the-hood changes can be found with these release notes:

Core:
Fixed bug #65911 (scope resolution operator - strange behavior with $this).
CLI server:
Fixed bug #65818 (Segfault with built-in webserver and chunked transfer encoding).
Exif:
Fixed crash on unknown encoding.
FTP:
Fixed bug #65667 (ftp_nb_continue produces segfault).
ODBC:
Fixed bug #65950 (Field name truncation if the field name is bigger than 32 characters).
Sockets:
Fixed bug #65808 (the socket_connect() won't work with IPv6 address).
Standard:
Fixed bug #64760 (var_export() does not use full precision for floating-point numbers).
XMLReader:
Fixed bug #51936 (Crash with clone XMLReader).
Fixed bug #64230 (XMLReader does not suppress errors).

Most of these changes are completely irrelevant to our members, but keeping our server-side software up to date is essential for both performance and security reasons.

Litespeed Web Server:

While we are still experiencing problems with the rendering of CSS elements using Litespeed, we are looking to see if there is a turning point or fix for this issue. While Litespeed is active, it may not necessarily be running at a given time, due to this issue. However, Litespeed was updated with these release notes:

• Improved handling of resource limits to avoid generating 508 error pages when possible. After resource limits have been reached, requests will instead be re-queued until resources become available.
• Fixed bug: Failure to detect all IPv6 addresses.
• Fixed bug: Multiple <Files ...> <FilesMatch ...> directives in different .htaccess files along a path were processed in the wrong order.
• Fixed bug: Server crash when an .htaccess file has been updated while it is still referenced by a long running request.
• Fixed bug: suEXEC ProcessGroup mode set at the virtual host level fails to override server level suEXEC Daemon mode.

Mobile Apps:

All of our mobile apps have been updated, except for iOS (Apple). This is expected, but we are looking forward to a quick turn around. Right now, version 3.0.5 is the universal copy for anyone running Android 4.0+ (Ice Cream Sandwich, Jellybean, and KitKat)

Those people with versions of Android that do not meet the ICS requirement will receive a different, but similar application. More information on this can be found here.

Thanks for your support!

 

[Mike]

Earlier this month:

• Primary server kernel software updated.
• Web server and PHP updated.
• Core forum software updated.
• Winter snow effect added.

December 23, 2013: Mobile App Updates (iOS changes are pending until after December 28th, 2013)

• Bug fixes and improvements.
• Limited to no ads for logged in users.
• Analytics support was added.
• iOS: Support added for iOS 5.
• iOS: Mobile app icon changed on iOS.
• Android: Mobile app splash screen changed.

 

[Mike]

Android App and Kindle App:

December 25th, 2013:
- Updated to be able to open "mailto:" link from web view.
- Updated to use app icon in Push Notification message.
- Fixed bug: click topic links sometimes will go to wrong topic.
- Added URL scheme back.
- Fixed crash issues and minor bugs.