* Missing nodes for "Pylos Alpha" and "Pylos Beta". Also, a number of things from the old site (v3.3) can be moved in to v4 if you make the nodes for them. The most important of those is Chat-Room info.

* The v4PM is great for managing newly-uploaded files, but what are we going to do about importing the old files? I have all the old binaries archived (from early on, including files uploaded after I quit). We gotta get them in here, but keep them separate from the newer files that were uploaded with the right-of-use disclaimers in place. I uploaded the images (Old-Images-Backup.zip) and UnknownOne has all the music. One idea is to place them online with a special distinction, "old" as the uploader ID, or something like that. Those files would be ignored by the Music / Illustration submission listings, but I can link to them from the "Old Data" posts located in each node as needed, or however you say. What do you think?

* Almost all hierarchical dynamic sites (ex Google Directory) put a you-are-here "linked path" location on top of the page, and I think we should too. It'll help the people who get easily lost. Like "Fate Of Io: Story: Locations: Titan Continent: Avemy", with each colon-delimited part linking to the appropriate parent node.

* Download interface is missing file size. I know you have too many columns already, but file size is more essential info than the dates. I have some interface ideas (for which I can e-mail you the HTML later) that would move some of the less essential info into a tooltip (alt text of an Info icon).

* The node descriptions can get pretty lengthy (like ten paragraphs "v4 Project Manager"). This makes it hard for the users who already read the node description, and want to work with the topics on the bottom (especially if they're not used to hitting the End key). Didn't you used to have a feature where only an intro paragraph is displayed, followed by a "read more" link? If you don't wanna abstract the intro from the user by default, how about a "collapse node description" link?

* I noticed that the link activator simply requires "[://]" (with something before and after it) in the square brackets. It doesn't check the validity of the link otherwise. Links to windows filenames (with spaces) are not handled effectively. It's OK for beta, there is a number of problems with that. E-mail links would be confusing for newbies. Plus protocols involved should be limited, because use of "file:", "vbscript:", or "outlook:" could exploit MS bugs, or at least scare some newbies. Most importantly, having full URL's as link names is ugly. Can't we just have name?

* How long do the "node active" (folder with orange expiation point) stay active? I just completed some posts, and all the nodes where I posted appear as "active". That doesn't help me, I know where I posted, what would be more helpful is to know if someone replied. How about a "mark all as read" feature, or something like that?

* Do we really need that www.fateofio.org link on the very top? Maybe we can stick a home link into that top image, making it an image-map. Either way, I have this subjective repulsion for casing www.FateOfIo.org in all-lowercase.

* You still have the ASP 404 page set up as "/v33/404.asp". With many URL changes on our site, search engines will continue to point at missing pages for months to come. It would be nice if v4PM provided a nice 404 page to replace the default "page not found, go away" one.

* The "Hosted by Optimus Prime" tribute image isn't included anywhere but the far-buried v3.2 site. Doesn't matter, really, I guess, I just wanted to point that out.

* Please register FateOfIo .com / .net domains. My alter-ego (the official villain and bad guy of this project) is constantly tempted to grab `em and make an "unofficial site". Just kidding, but this project may produce disgruntled psychos who'd be ::GASP:: even more evil than I am!

* PLEASE do me the dignity of removing the /v33 site. I offered to restore the original on temporary basis several days after I left, but you refused. So why did you put up that half-baked and very outdated backup that doesn't work?

(I'll edit this message if I think of anything else.)

OK. You sure you don't want to make Pylos Alpha a sub-node of Titan City, and all? (Why not?) Or should I post the old location descriptions into the parent node?

More bits of trivially small feedback:

• The HR tag (horizontal line) that separates the post text from sig text is IMHO annoying. Especially if the person has a large sig and writes small posts, it makes one post look like two. This is my subjective opinion, don't know if many people would agree. A more objective annoyance is that this HR looks especially bad if the person has no sig. How about making the line appear only if the sig in non-blank?

• Also IMHO: starting lines with lowercase (i.e. "posted ...") looks a bit unprofessional.

• Like everyone keeps saying, we need a link in the message posting / editing interface that opens the text of project.v4pm.howto (no interface overhead in a small, vertically-scrollable pop-up window.

• Many people are used to how other forum scripts show you the previous posts on the thread to which you are posting. What I think would be more sensible than that is to provide a "View X prior post(s) on this topic" link, which would open the backlog in a new window.

• In "Preview" mode, I would put the form above the preview itself. That way fewer people would forget that they never finalized their post.

• I think <p> tags are much better than <br /> tags. This is an issue of logical tags vs formatting tags. Keeping the text in identifiable paragraphs is more accessible, and would give us more CSS control over it. BTW, some old NS browsers are confused by the XHTML self-closing slash in tags with no parameters. So <br/>, which we use now, will be ignored, while <br />, with a space, will work.

• The nesting of the <ul> tags in the Navigation sidebar seems a bit buggy.

• About 20% of a v4PM page I analysed were comments and whitespace. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but (depending on how the template system is set up) I'd bet many of those comments can be kept server-side only, where they belong. Top copyright comments are of very little legal value. I'd use meta tags instead.

• Whenever we have a copyright notice, we should site a range of years (i.e. 2001-2002), not just the latest year. That is more legally correct, and it would show that we are an established project.

• The timestamps are in the US Central time zone, but that isn't noted anywhere.

• I wonder why no one has commented about Interface Suggestions ...

Alex, I am reading your suggestions and I do plan to use many of them when I get a chance to do more work on the site. I just don't have time to respond to everything.

But, as long as I'm posting anyway, I'll make one comment:

As stated on the splash page, this site requires the latest version of whatever browser you use. IE, Netscape, Opera, and Konqueror are all known to work, but only the latest verisons. I know I used to tell you that we needed to support Netscape 4 when you were building the site, but I think Mozilla has evolved to the point now where it is a reasonable browser for users on all platforms. (I never avocated Lynx support.)

Actually, the specific bug you are referring to was indeed present in IE6, but we fixed it several days ago... or, we sort of fixed it, anyway. It occurs when you make the window too small. Currently any window at least 800 pixels wide will not have problems. Almost everyone runs at 800x600 or higher, so it should be fine.

EDIT: I don't think large fonts will make a difference in this case. Are you still having problems?

While v4PM doesn't have its own counter feature, wanna use the third party counter account I used in v3.3b? (I'll transfer the SiteMeter.com account to Temporal as needed.)

Insert that code into both the /index.html and the default footer interface of v4PM. It'll be uplifting to see just how many hits we're getting.