The search forum function needs to be improved.
I regularly end up using google to serch the panda3D forums
Rob.
EDIT:
MAKE PANDA XHTML 1.0 STRICT! … PLEASE
1st of all: Why use XHTML at all?
Its “HTML 4.01 Transitional”, which is an accepted standard and should be supported by most - if not all browsers (even older ones). Dunno… The IE might have problems but I don’t call this one a standards compilant browser at all…
2nd question: What didn’t work using the search function of the forums?
Your post doesn’t very much belong to this thread since the context of the thread is about discussing a new layout. Not a new description language.
But maybe it is connected… if not - maybe the topic can be split… 
Regards, Bigfoot29
well bigfoot it still does not validate. New layout should.
Sorry I haven’t done any new iterations of the redesign, internship is sucking down on all of my time. I’ll get more done over the weekend. Also I support the move towards XHTML validation, especially strict. It will withstand browser upgrades better, witness the coming of IE8
ZeroByte, how dare you name that which shall not be named! dont talk about such evlishness! We want more iterations!
Well, its funny to want to change a default forums coding styles just because all we get are two errors and another one being reported repeatedly (SHORTTAG).
Maybe you want to bugger the phpBB devs with that. - Even if its only an advice.
As you may have noticed, I am not a fried of XHTML. I still prefer an older html standard due to the fact that MORE browsers can cope with that. So again the question: Why XHTML?
Regards, Bigfoot29
Edit: Zerobyte: We demand iterations! 
Nah, joke aside… it IS already a good design. I would love to hear some feedback from Josh about their status and what he thinks of it…
All the benifits of XML with HTML
w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_why.asp
Interesting regarding IE (yes i know it’s old, but still interesting)
oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006 … et_ex.html
Why not
friendlybit.com/html/why-xhtml-is-a-bad-idea/
Interestingly, this is a good article on why not to use XHTML and raises hugely valid points.
Shorttags allows you to do this
(which is standard in XHTML) instead of this
in HTML
Look at www.wowarmory.com to see just how handy XML is at describing objects.
example
wowarmory.com/character-shee … ul&n=Panda
using XML data and an XSL style sheet is a great combination. XSL works the same as CSS for html, by prettifing the page. XSL can also be used for XHTML pages, since XHTML can be pased as XML.
I agree that this is a bit off topic the whole standards thing, but it is relevant when designing layout. You can’t just slap things together like you used too, cross browser compatibility is insanely stupid, thank god we have standards.
Rob.
Hmmm… I think the major drawback has already been found:
User created content may break the whole site - including the cut-off of IEx users.
I also read your why-use-xhtml link. All he said was “cuz it will be …” - it still isn’t after years.
What frightens me away are the dozens of pages following saying “don’t do this, do it this way instead!”. Some of them are reasonable, some of them are pure bs. (if logics are involved)
On a side note: our kids at school learn html, not xhtml; I don’t think the reason is not-wanting-to-be-future-compilant. I think the idea is to show how things should work. This includes the lower case and
stuff - and also the correct inlining (ui) and quite some other things - but it does NOT include silly stuff likeinstead of
I still don’t suggest it for Panda3D - nor for any other site containing user generated data.
The thread has been split successfully.
Regards, Bigfoot29
PS: Now a bit into detail… You DO know that servers do have limited capacity, right? What do you think what will happen if a dynamic website needs to be re-validated every time before it could be sent to the user because it might otherwise “break” parsing? Even if you do only sum up the validation work work for new user generated content each time it is being deployed at the server. Doing the error-management at the client allows servers to stay within reasonable dimensions. Also the whole stuff about faster parsing is kinda bull(you know whats missing). Yap, it may be faster. But guess what… my first machines have had 1,79 MHz (first x86: 8MHz) - Don’t tell me that the problems are handhelds or desktop computers. Websites were also quite viewable in 1995 - where we talked about 60 MHz of “raw and pure processor speed”. Current devices (even handhelds) do run with at least twice the speed. The problem is the overloading of websites with content. It isn’t “in” any more to keep websites simple. Dozens of banners, images, frames and whatnot.
xHTML isn’t a solution - it just avoids working productive creating web pages that are kept simple by intention.
xHTML? No thanks. But thanks to god, I don’t have too much to say “here”, so all my ranting won’t change much at the website creators decision(s). 
After all this now realise the pure fad that is XHTML. I can see the inherit benifits for pages that need alot of dynamic content generation. But for the everyday uesr HTML 4.1 is fine.
Lets face it HTML support is not going to die overnight I don’t see it being dropped within the next 10 years. But having said that, standardisation is essential. I am so glad I missed the era of javascript browser detection hacks.
with regards to HTML and validation, the most essential thing to be considered is nesting
meh the pics of the redesign look good, I voted that I don’t care, but yeah.
Robert
If you want to skip the rant read on at the bold line.
Well, html surely won’t die in the next years, since html 5 is in development.
Its still one of the key features that made the web THIS successfull that the small mistakes that do otherwise frustrate users away are able to make their website as well as needed.
So - at least for me - this error friendly language is the standard.
I would also prefer everyone using the “strict” setting, but I won’t do that because its up to everyone themselves if they want to do it. Not everyone likes being forced to follow stupid rules.
Example Python: I can live with the rule that you do have to format the source code in a manner that makes sense. But on the contrary I dislike languages like perl because they have quite some stupid rules.
Next reason is that I in general dislike hypes being brought to you by people getting nuts about the topic they want to involve you into. There was one guy trying to convince the dear reader about xhtml so hard that it ended up in head shaking… sure, that boy has had its points - but they are useless for the normal developer. They do only make sense for nerds. (like “if you say no to xhtml, you say no to standardization in the web!” - html is standardized. Problem is that folks sometimes don’t care too much about it.)
They tell you to do impossible stuff (like “hey, make this portal xhtml 1.0!”) (impossible because several modules are merged that cannot be made xhtml without an extreme ammount of work), talk about special fields of usage that don’t include you ( “but eh… for IE that needs a hack again” ) or they are trying to trigger your pride (“html is sooo 1996!”).
Same problem with IPv6. They designed it, they implemented it in test scenarios and are - 10 years later - wondering why noone uses it. To tell the reasons: The implentations are crap (try running ipv6 using a ipv4 tunnel on a vserver - not possible without compiling) or non-existant, important end user features are missing (don’t ask me… I dropped IPv6 a few years ago - was not useable and is not useable for end users till now - at least not to an level where its superior to IPv4) or the practical implementation of the theoretical idea just went into crap (like xhtml).
While the idea of xml parsing isn’t a bad one since more than the few browsers can cope with it, they forgot that error handling must be possible by the client. Otherwise the whole idea will never reach critical mass.
Don’t get me wrong, its not a bad thing that XML-parser do bail when getting errorous data. Its a tool from programmers mostly for programmers. But then XML isn’t a good choice for a web application where language errors can and will occure. For me xhtml 1.0 is a design flaw in itself. The basic idea was nice, but the practical implemention using XML was a failure. Nice to have Vector graphics and math stuff included - but thats nothing that cannot be achieved otherwise.
- html 5 would also be a nice place for that sort of commands.
Unless xhtml 2 doesn’t change drastically to diversify from html and its abilities, I don’t see any reason to use it in a way of being the successor of html. It did not and it will not replace html. (or why do you think html 5 was finally developed after xhtml failed so horribly that we needed flash & co?)
html is a way of standardization.
Without it we would have proprietary material that only one viewer could show. - Like flash-only-sites or stuff like this.
Problem is that it is still a language in development. This made it hard sometimes, but also so… well… useable nowadays. It wasn’t planned and did everything right away. It evolved. html 5 hopefully will make big steps into the direction of a more unified standardization making xhtml even more obsolete.
But again, this are only my thoughts. Others are welcome to show their point of view.
Regards, Bigfoot29
Edit: if xhtml does also evolve in a more useable direction where you really do have arguments that make it superior in some fields, I am open minded - but currently I don’t see any advantages that could not be solved using existing or already evolving technology. Just the fact that it can be parsed is a gimmick, a toy. If you don’t need to parse whole websites, its useless since if thats wanted by the owner, he can give you output that could be parsed. I - for my websites - want folks to come there and look for themselves. That my websites could be parsed wouldn’t help me a bit.
The setup of right now is ok. It just needs to be updated more then what it is. Needs to improve search, manual and some other stuff. Also, you should move the forums away from the site like what they did:
delgine.com/
cprogramming.com/begin.html
The sites have their forums away from their site to make it an easy flow from examples/learning, help forum, and their product.
Oh, while the website is redesigned, why not have the community contribute more sample programs to the panda package? I’m targeting the Greeting Card example specifically, I think it ought to show more of what Panda can do to wow people right at the start. Make it a minigame instead of just greeting people but irunno.
Oh, and the docs. It would be really really nice if we could get a wiki style thing up so that code examples could be much more centralized.
Examples are easy. Send them to Josh and he can integrate them.
Alternatively make a post in the showroom or Code Snipplets and then send him a PM. 
Regards, Bigfoot29
We already have a wiki… where anyone can contribute.
heh right. Another good place for code examples is the code snipplets forum section.
Now you have 3 places for your code…
The source code (for full blown examples)
The manual/wiki (for examples matching the topic given)
The code snipplets forum section (for pieces of code that don’t belong to one of the first two places)
Regards, Bigfoot29
Guys, I have a choice. I can spend this semester finishing panda’s automatic shader generation code, or I can spend this semester redesigning the website.
That’s a no-brainer.
This is the classic developer’s dilemma, of course. It’s why documentation is almost always weaker, and older, than the code it documents.
Maybe Panda3D needs someone new to work on the documentation / web page / marketing full time, but do no code development?
David
Hmmm… didn’t want to start an argument about it.
I do just have in mind that you asked me a while back how the Panda3DProjects thing is developing and that you do have students to work on that while a redesign was planned anyway.
A full time job invokes the discussion about payment. Dunno in what dimensions this is an issue. I did - and for sure will - continue my support here. But a full time job is above my possibilities.
But I can take over some more of the website management itself. Maybe we do find someone feeling responsible for documentation. Spreading the tasks may be a solution there without the need of an fully fledged full time job.
Regards, Bigfoot29