Maxithlon version Easter 2017 – release notes

(20:00 15-04-2017)
We are very pleased to announce the release of our Easter version with the first changes to Maxithlon in a long time. In this news message we will explain the changes.

Before we finally tell you what is new, we want to warn you that this release needs some work by the translators, so please do not worry if you see some Italian on the web site. This will be modified soon when the translators upload their work.

Keyboard shortcuts: To make browsing through pages easier, we introduced an option to use the keyboard instead of having to scroll to the arrow icons and click. This is now implemented in two areas:
1. on the Athlete’s individual page it will be possible to use Alt+O and Alt+P to move to the previous or next Athlete
2. on the Event results and enrollment pages: same keys allow moving to the previous or next page
This might work slightly different in the browser you use, so please check the table below this news for the correct key combination in your browser.
Depending on the feedback from users, we could also implement this feature on other pages like Coaches, Relays and Rankings and even something similar to jump to the tabs on some pages like the Athletes page.

Imperial units: Users from USA, UK and others countries are used to the imperial system instead of the metric system, which means pound, feet and inches, etc. instead of kg, metres, etc. We have now added an option in the Settings page to select the Measure units (Imperial/Metric). As a first step this is now used to display the Physique of an athlete (Height & Weight) on the Individual athlete’s page and the Athletes details page. To allow sorting the Height on the Athletes details page we included a leading zero on the inches, so you can click on the column header to sort the values from low to high, a second click reverses the sorting. Depending on the feedback from users, we can extend this feature to the results of the field events later.

“Unread” indicators on federations: Before you could see a list of federations, but you needed to open them one by one to see if there were new unread messages. Within the federation the system shows a red 'Unread' message for each Board title with new posts. We have now enhanced this to also show this kind of message in the main menu after the federations code.

Status message about achieving a record: When one of your athletes breaks a national, continental or world record you will see a message on the home page in Status messages section.

Age on the Athletes test page: To avoid having to open two screens or having to switch between two pages, we will now also show the age of the athletes on the Athletes test page. We are aware that people have suggested to include other information on other screens and plan to discuss this further in the federations, but please be aware that not all information is readily available in the database and some is calculated on the fly.

Logout button: Managers reported that they sometimes logout accidentally when they want to open a federation on a mobile or tablet, because the Logout button is too close to the federations list. To avoid this, we have moved the Logout button away from the federations list.

Other items: including amongst others:
- Making some screen texts and buttons that were always in English in the past available for translation in the various languages
- Enhancements to the federations system to avoid moderators making them invisible
- Upgrade of the system for e-mailing from the Maxithlon website
- Making the e-mails SPF certified to limit the risk of being stopped by spam filters
- Modifications to allow future enhancements concerning the security of the connection to Maxithlon
- some bug fixes have been added

Release of the new logo: As announced earlier we decided on a new logo and that will now become visible. The logo is no longer very close to the rest of the page to avoid user click on the logo when they want to select items at the top of the screen.

We hope that the Maxithlon community sees this as a positive move and will support us in our further journey with new developments. Please feel free to put your feedback, comments and questions in the official federations and we try to get back to you soonest.

Keyboard shortcuts (Previous: key = O & Next: key = P)
Browser____________ Windows_______ Linux_________ Mac____________
Chrome_______________ Alt+key ______ Alt+key ______ Ctrl+Alt+key
Firefox______________ Alt+Shift+key_ Alt+Shift+key_ Ctrl+Alt+key
Internet Explorer____ Alt+key] _____ Not available_ Not available
Internet Explorer 11_ Not available_ Not available_ Not available
Safari_______________ Alt+key ______ Not available_ Ctrl+Alt+key
Opera (15 or newer)__ Alt+key ______ Alt+key ______ Alt+key_____
Opera (12.1 or older) Shift+Esc+key_ Shift+Esc+key_ Shift+Esc+key



More information about the team behind the Easter release

Former attempts to rebuild a team to support and develop Maxithlon brought together many enthusiastic people and many ideas, but it was difficult to get results. After some time, enthusiasm declined and people got busy in their own personal lives. After a number of attempts Ned, founder and owner of the game, decided to scale down the plan to get something moving and got together a small team. Here are the members of the team working on the Easter release:

Apolo is the developer of the team. He started some time back spending time to get familiar with the development tools and the source code. As a first job he moved the system to a newer version of the tools to enable future support and developments.

Ivanovik joined the team as content manager. He works on reactivating the news section of the game and is listing a number of ideas for future activities. The "End of the season awards" is one of the first projects.

Recently Guyvandamme joined the team as an analyst and "project manager" to help getting a plan in place to get things moving. He will analyze and specify possible changes and enhancement.

Ned is of course our guide and advisor and he has the final decision regarding all changes.

Together we agreed there was an urgent need to show some results of the hard work recently done and it was decided to put together a release with some very small changes, to show the Maxithlon community something more than words… After evaluation of the work involved, the benefits and the risks to the system, the items for the release where put together. Apolo did the development and together we tested them in a test environment resulting in feedback and further fine-tuning. Maxithlon translators got the new text for converting into different languages ready for the release.

We know you were very curious to know what is included in the Easter release, but we believed it was best to publish release notes together with activating the new version. Thank you for your patience.

Thanks and regards,

Ned, Apolo, Ivanovik and Guyvandamme