Blogging the TK Redevelopment

 Purpose of this Blog

The purpose of this Blog is to document the advances in the TK Redevelopment, and provide a central hub for people to ask questions and keep up to date with progress.

If we can all get in the habit of commenting and reporting and reading this blog, then we'll streamline development immeasurably!

Accessing the Development Environment

1. Login to Track King as per normal
2. View one of your horses
3. Amend the URL (web address)...
     Immediately after "www.trackking.org", insert "/hairboylabs/redesign"
     so that the URL looks something like:
     www.TrackKing.org/hairboylabs/redesign/horse.php?hid=....
4. You're away!
5. PLEASE remember that the new version is hush-hush. I'd appreciate you asking me before you post details and screenshots etc to any other TK players. The last thing I want is to have to deal with an uproar in TK about the new design or some other decision at the same time as I'm building it lol!

Progress so far

I've now started keeping an up-to-date list of pages/functions that should be functional. Please refer to that Post (dated April 8th) for details.

***Window Caching Explained

PHP code, as in original Track King, builds the entire page and sends it to your computer every time you click a new link. This is quite "expensive" on the server resources.

In the TK Redevelopment, I've designed a system which keeps the "framework" of the page intact and loads only the essence of each page. It also then retains those pages in your computers memory (artificially cached) so that if you open a link that you've previously viewed, it will simply pull up the old version, and not need to contact the server at all! This will clearly reduce load on the server hugely, especially at peak times.

It should also greatly reduce the need for tabbed browsing, because you can store your favourites as hot links and quickly switch between windows to get information on the go. Tiled display mode will also assist in this, especially for mobile devices.

As a consequence, each "window" has a "last refresh" counter in the top corner. This enables you to quickly decide whether the content is up-to-date, and allows you to manually refresh when you feel necessary.

Many updates that happen, such as training, vets, servicing, and gelding, will push their updates into the cached windows, meaning that data will generally be up to date.

So, when testing the system, please keep an eye on how this performs and report any instances where an update hasn't flowed into another window as you'd have expected. Not all cases can be fixed, but it's good to have them reported so that I can make those assessments.