News

If you haven’t been following my updates on it so far, you’ve almost certainly heard of Firefox by now anyway. That won’t deter me from my usual milestone upgrade-o-push, though.

Though the new Firefox 1.0 Preview Release isn’t as packed with landmark new features as previous editions, the focus has largely been on fixing bugs and improving stability, along with minor enhancements for improved convenience. The bookmarks manager now has a folder pane on the left, for instance, and bookmark icons are much less prone to disappear over time. The default theme which drew much criticism on the initial release of Firefox 0.9 is greatly improved. In addition, there are a number of enhancements designed to prevent spoofing of browser windows and secure sites: the location bar is now highlighted and shows a lock icon on secure sites, and the status bar security area shows the host name to ensure you’re in the right place. By default, the status bar can no longer be hidden in popup windows.

One of the more interesting new features is the addition of Live Bookmarks, which allow you to keep track of news sites, blogs etc. which provide a syndication service. Look for the RSS icon on the right of the status bar to see where this is available. I may even work on hooking up CoN news or recent posts at some point, since there’s basic functionality for it built into the board. Also look out for the new find toolbar, which replaces the familiar old find dialog, searches while you type and includes the ability to highlight your search term in the document.

The popup blocker has been improved, and now allows user-requested popups to open during page load, as well as being better at blocking unrequested popups (though it doesn’t seem to work properly with the popular TBE extension, which probably needs updating). A Windows XP SP2-style information bar now appears when popups or extension installations are blocked, or when plugins are needed to display a page. While these are good for new users, I personally found the popup notification bar to be irritating; thankfully, it can be disabled very easily.

I know I say it every time there’s a new Firefox release, but this really is the best one yet, and a great excuse to try an alternative browser if you’ve never stepped away from Internet Explorer — the browser being able to update itself for future milestone releases is certainly a very promising feature in terms of ease of use.

If Firefox isn’t for you, you might consider trying Opera or the old Mozilla "1.x" Suite before heading back to Internet Explorer. If you’re determined to stick with IE or one of its variants, it’s a very good idea to make sure you have Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed, which provides security enhancements and, at last, popup blocking. It’s important to note, though, that there’s no way to obtain this IE update on anything other than Windows XP. There is also no improvement to Web standards support either, which is our main platform for bullying you all into changing browser, including the now pretty basic functionality of displaying PNG images correctly; it’s understood that this probably won’t even be improved in the next major release of Internet Explorer, which has been comfirmed only to be in production for the next version of Windows, codename “Longhorn”. In other words: don’t expect anything new from IE for a long time, if ever, and only if you’re prepared to shell out for a new OS. It’s also unlikely that future optional CoN styles will be available for Internet Explorer, if you care about that sort of thing.

If you want a Mozilla e-mail client to go with your Firefox browser, the excellent Thunderbird 0.8 was released at the same time as Firefox 1.0PR, now featuring the ability to import Outlook and Outlook Express messages, as well as store messages from POP3 accounts in a single inbox.

• Firefox Product Page


• Firefox 1.0PR Downloads


• BitTorrent tracker for Firefox releases


• The Burning Edge: Bigger Picture (notable changes in Firefox 1.0PR)
   



• Firefox Extensions


• Firefox Themes


• Warning: old extensions and themes from Firefox 0.9.x may not be compatible with 1.0PR.
   



• Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8


• Opera Software


• Mozilla Suite

A few of you have e-mailed us about the recurring problem with the forums, where a white screen appears instead of the proper forum page, with some SQL and a response "error 28 from table handler".

This is caused by the configuration of our Web host allowing the disk to fill up. We're told that this occurs when other users of the hosting provider use the site backup option in their control panel. We're also told that it won't be disabled, because it would be inconvenient for users not to be able to back up their sites.

Apparently it's not at all inconvenient that users can't use their site much of the time...

Anyway, rest assured that we'll be badgering the host incessantly about sorting this out, or they'll be losing our business before too long. In the mean time, please do keep letting us know when the error occurs, so that we can track how serious the problem is (although obviously it's better that not every member e-mails us: perhaps the folks in chat at the time could arrange for one person to send the e-mail). Keep the subject line "SQL Error" (change the '+' in the default subject to a space, if it's there) so we can filter the messages nicely.

Thanks for your patience, folks.

After a long period of not having the ability to update, there are now two fanfics on the site.

Madness ...and a Beetle is an FF6 fanfiction by Djibriel that centres around Cyan.

Sialla and Idi is a short and funny piece by Zephir that takes place in a familiar village, but with new characters (not characters in FF4).

Both of these authors are members of the forums, and have contributed before. Their previous work can be found in the FF6 and FF4 sections as well.

Enjoy! More to come soon.

We here at CoN have always wanted to offer hosting to a few small sites that present good or innovative information to the Final Fantasy community; however, that has rarely been an option in our history.

As you've seen in the last few months, we've started to do just that. Now that CoN has a relatively stable and relatively permanent server to call home, we have extended a couple welcomes to our compatriots in the world of Final Fantasy sites, first Fierce Legends, and now, our second hostee, the Unoriginal White Sheet published by CoN member Master ZED. We know that this site is quite popular among the Final Fantasy hacking community, including those who don't hack but like knowing the inner workings of the game. We're pleased to help ZED to get away from his horrid old host.

In other news, we've added another new affiliate to the group - this is, I think, the third or fourth this year, an impressive number of top-tier sites who want to link with us. This time around, it's our first-ever foreign-language affiliate (and before you ask, we can say that because we don't consider bad English to be foreign). Everyone, please say hello to Final Craft, a German site with extensive coverage of PSX and PS2 Final Fantasy games. Give it a brief check, even if you don't know German.

There we go, that's our site update for the day. We're working on stuff around the site now, hopefully we'll have more to tell you soon!

Couple weeks ago, CoN turned seven. You might have noticed that I said that we had some stuff planned for you. You might have noticed also that I so gently implied that if you still insist on referring to CoN as a FF6 site, you might not be all that bright.

Maybe you weren't paying attention then. Perhaps you haven't the imagination to look past the name of this site and realize that we cover four games now, and have coverage rivaling or surpassing sites out there (and if you don't think so, feel free to PM me to tell me who does it better and why).

Perhaps you'll notice when you're done reading this message, or at least that is my hope. I want this to be a nail in the coffin - we're serious about the future of this site. While most sites out there are stagnating, you can count on CoN to stay here and keep trying to give you what you want.

So here's your nail in the coffin; here's what we wanted to offer you as a birthday present but couldn't quite get there. The staff and I proudly present to you the fifth game in the CoN stable - Final Fantasy. We've got data for both the NES and newer PSX versions, and we want you to get into this classic game if you never have before. We think this section is by far the most detailed and best coded we've ever done, and we hope you feel the same.

So please, visit the section, and let us know what you think. We hope that you will get as much enjoyment out of using the FF1 section as we got out of putting it together! ...oh. We hope you enjoy it more.

Lucky seven is what we've come upon here, isn't it? What a long time it's been. And you know what's funny about it? It gets longer every day. Strange how time works.

Now, ridiculously stupid opening paragraph aside, let me welcome you all to CoN's seventh birthday. We can now start our eighth year of life, which really is almost unprecedented among the major FF sites. It's really pretty amazing to me, this timeline. When this site started, some of the members here were in Uni; some were in high school; some in middle school; a few were probably all the way back in kindergarten. But yet, we've all come together due to our common interests (and for the most part, an ability to not suck at posting here. >_> ).

This past year has been huge. Without a doubt, the biggest year CoN has ever had by far. You all know what a statswhore I am, and what would a birthday story be from me without a little bit of stats fun? So, let's start here: in the past year, we recorded that we pushed 2,334,519 individual pages out to you all, for a total of nearly 162 GB of information. We set a new record for CoN pages delivered in a month for nine months out of the last 12. For one shiny week in April, we were even in the top 100,000 sites web-wide on Alexa's traffic monitor. Yes, web-wide. According to ISC, in January 2004, there were 230 million hosts on the internet. Some of those have no web sites, some have several. Even though we're lower now than that lofty peak, we're hovering near the 1,000,000 mark of the vast site log. So, even if you cut ISC's number in half, that still puts us near the top 1% of all sites on the internet in regards to traffic.

Oh, and we're not done yet. Give us some time to work on the projects we've got on the burners now, and year eight might be even bigger than year seven. We have some fun stuff planned, don't worry - and we think you'll like it! If you still think of us as primarily a Final Fantasy VI site, this year might change your mind. I kind of implied earlier that we are among the major FF sites on the web. If you agree, great. If you don't, stay tuned and we'll try to convince you. Unless you come to us just for the forums, then you don't care anyway and should really take some time to study your surroundings.

We do have one project that is coming OFF the burner right now to show up at your CoN dinner table. A lot of you probably know of FraudulentTommah's cool Rash project, which is a slick PHP based counter to the somewhat clunky quote management system at bash.org. Tom can tell you more himself, but launching today is the first major-site implementation of Tom's code, specially set up to work with CoN! So if you chat in #narshe, definitely submit the funny lines you've seen starting today - and if you don't chat with us, perhaps it's time to start!

Well, that's the big news today. Before I go, let me thank a lot of people for a very special year here. Of course, I have to start with Tiddles, without whom a lot of the cool stuff here would not be possible or would not be nearly as cool; Neal and Elena, who have been friends forever and the hardest working site admins that I could ask for; Phoenix for his work behind the scenes and intermittent news from Japan; Hikaroo for fab art; and finally among the staff, SSJC and Tommah, who have so often been stuck with the work that is most thankless but also extremely important to the site, and for always doing it in the most professional of manner even though they KNOW it's thankless.

We've also had a lot of help, as always, from those people who care a lot about the site and want to see us continue to grow. I can't mention everyone here because it would take forever, and I probably can't remember everyone who's helped in the last year anyway. But I'll spew off a few here - Mr_Thou, Max, Rubes, Super Moogle, Zeph, Hanyou, EvilEye, Pink_Nu1, Kappa - and of course the list can go on. Thank you all for showing what it means to really be involved with a community.

And, of course, thanks has to go to every person who contributes well to this always-expanding village. If you give your art or fiction to us to display on the site, you help us at the same time as you grow your own skills with practice and feedback. If you make thoughtful posts or create interesting chat, you dig a little deeper the hole in which we all swim. Of course, if you do none of these things, we probably still like you anyway. Well, some of you.

So there we go, that should about do it for this year, don't you think? Let's start it off with a bang.

Two final notes before I end my rambling.

1. Hopefully by now you have all noticed the ads in most sections of the main site. They show up with most page loads, especially on the main page, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI. It helps CoN to pay for and perhaps upgrade the server, and even maybe run contests in the near future if you click one of these ads a day. Please try it - it takes just a few seconds and really is quite literally the least you can do to help.

2. I know it's been rumored before that I might leave the site. I can't do so right now, we have too much to do in the next few weeks. So, instead of announcing an immediate permanent sabbatical from running the day-to-day operations of CoN, I am announcing that I plan to take my leave on 1 September of this year. This should give enough time to turn over the reins to Tiddles (no fighting over the order of succession, you kids), and for him to come up to speed on handling both my jobs and his.

Thank you all again for a great year, and may we all continue growing personally and as a part of CoN.