Sending you some virtual ice cream (since it would be a melted mess if I sent you the real thing). Hugs!

Don't work 'em ALL out, please. Cuz we ain't happy unless we bitchin'. >:-) Happy nappy!

no worries!!! Walk on with your bad self!!!!

Ditto

Ice cream solves all problems!

We appreciate all you do. Go re-energize yourself. Step away. Eat, sleep, walk, run, do whatever you need to. When you get back to it, you will have a fresh mind.

Thanks for all your do! So very happy to be able to see clues today! Yippee! Hope to get out tomorrow or Saturday to box!

Shelly

I shall also eat ice cream, in solidarity with you. And I shall also walk. To the Wawa to get it. 😇

(My sympathies to those of you who do not know what Wawa is. 🤗 You need to come visit.)

Thanks again GT for taking care of us.

May be time for one more thought .........

So should we be reporting bugs, or hold off for now?

Go ahead and report them. As far as I know, everything on the website is working correctly so I've just been tweaking the server settings.

-- Ryan

Ryan,
Please take time for you!!!! We can certainly be patient and kind through all of this, and for all you do! Thank you!!!
Pumpkin Gal 🎃

Recently I logged a find and posted a public note. The box owner wrote replied to me with a thanks. His message to me included my original posting, complete with the options to approve or deny it! Just for grins I hit "Approve" and was told the FBI was coming to get me. Somehow I don't think it's supposed to work that way.

Actually, it sounds like it worked exactly like it was supposed to. You aren't supposed to be able to approve your own comments on other people's boxes! Only the box owner can do that! =)

Not sure why they would have included your original posting with the options to approve or deny it, though. And, as the poster of the message, you CAN actually "deny" the posting. On AQ, denying and deleting a post are basically the same thing--and while the poster is not allowed to approve their post to another person's box, they are allowed to delete it.

So good thing you didn't try clicking the "deny" button just for grins. =)

When you go to a page that you're "unauthorized" to use, you'll get the "FBI is coming to get you" page. And you were, indeed, unauthorized to approve that comment.

So it actually sounds like it all worked correctly!

-- Ryan

Sit down while you eat that ice cream, it’ll taste better. Oh yeah.

I've added a couple of new My Page settings.

There's always been a minimum column size--mostly so columns don't get too crushed on mobile devices, but I've added a maximum column size as well. The default is 50--which is actually "50em" for those of you familiar with em units. It's a pretty large column, and I kind of doubt most people ever saw columns that wide to begin with, but it's an option now. Maybe useful for those who decided they prefer only two columns for mobile devices and now the columns are ridiculously wide on desktops.

But in any case, you can control the maximum width that columns will be.

The trickier setting is "initial scale". That one's a little hard to describe. I've been playing around with it for the last week or so trying to figure out an optimal size, and frankly, I've given up. I don't think there is an optimal size, and there's a good chance that everyone would prefer something different. So--good thing it's a setting now! =)

I call it the "initial scale" because--for those who are familiar with HTML, it basically goes into the "viewport" meta tag.

100 = normal sized. Most pages on AQ are set to "normal size". The full-size page that doesn't require zooming in or out to see. Larger values can zoom in even closer, while smaller values take more of a "zoomed out" look that My Page has continued to use for all these years. Zooming in makes things legible, but often requires more scrolling to see everything. Pluses and minuses.

(For those of you without technical backgrounds, skip this paragraph. I know that the "viewport" setting in HTML actually uses 1 as the "normal" zoom. You're right. I didn't want to store decimals in the database, though, and decided to use an integer scale and I just divide that number by 100 before putting it into the HTML. So a "default" setting of 100 gets divided by 100 and you wind up with the 1 you normally would have expected. So a setting on AQ of 200 creates an initial-scale of 2 in the code. And a setting of 50 creates an initial-scale of 0.5. You get the idea.)

I still needed to decide what to use as the default setting, however, and decided just to go with the "normal" zoom level used everywhere else on AQ.

Some of you might feel this is zoomed in TOO MUCH. You can only see one column at a time! If that bothers you, edit your My Page settings so the initial scale is something less than 100. As a general rule of thumb, I found using 100 divided by the number of columns you want to see works pretty well. Not perfect, but well. So if you have a two-column layout and want to see both columns without scrolling, use an initial scale of 50. If you use three columns, try an initial scale of 33. If you use four columns, maybe 25.

You'll probably want to experiment a bit to see what feels best for you. This setting doesn't really affect desktops or laptops at all--this is purely a mobile-device option.

If you don't mind scrolling but hate zooming in or out, you'd probably prefer the default settings. If you don't mind zooming in or out but want to see all the columns at once, try using 100 divided by the number of columns you use. (This is what I had been doing before it was a custom setting you can control.)

Anyhow... go ahead and experiment. I hope that all made sense!

Additionally, there shouldn't be any "Ctrl-F5" issues involved because while these settings do affect the CSS, they affect the CSS directly in the HTML page rather than on cached pages. Changing the minimum and maximum column sizes, initial scales and such should show up immediately upon a regular refresh of the page.

Happy trails!

-- Ryan

Yeah, what you said.

My page looks like it did before you worked so hard to add the updates. Thank you!!!..........for the extra work to make it "work" ;j

condo

Thanks Ryan! It looks so much better!!!

Jaxx

You can read all the details on the official AQ blog, but in a nutshell, it's now possible to keep track of the specific latitude and longitude coordinates for each of your boxes.

It's for your own use, though. This isn't geocaching, after all! Only the owners and planters of a box can see the coordinates.

-- Ryan

This will be very useful. A water authority in our area has several wonderful parks and trails. When I get word of trail improvements/changes I pull boxes but sometimes a person isn’t quick enough to get there or out of the area when it happens. From now on that won’t be a problem with this feature. Thanks!

Been there, done that! Landmarks don't even have to change for me to forget just where I planted a box. While I do not usually bring my GPS with me when I plant a box it is something I've thought of doing (recording coordinates for my notes on a box) for a while now. I'll bet there is a way to get GPS long/lat from my phone (Android). I'll have to look into that.

i think it was this post. but i see now that its from 2005 hahaha

Just in case you would otherwise miss it, it is now possible to list your stamps on Atlas Quest.

Each box listed on AQ can now include one more stamps. This is entirely optional, but for those of you who just can't help yourselves, there is now a proper place for you to list all of the stamps within one of your boxes. =)

-- Ryan

I should also mention.... this was a pretty substantial update. Even had to take AQ down for a half hour while updating the website to support this feature.

As far as I know, it's all working properly and like expected, but please be patient if you find any bugs or problems that I need to work out. There's a good chance that some could have slipped through the cracks!

-- Ryan

It might not be a bug, but it now appears that every box in a series is "the first box"
When seeing a number before a name is it generally assumed to be a numbered list.
1. Barrington
1. Bristol
1. Burriville
1. Central Falls.........

I planted 40 stamps in 40 different boxes over 3 miles, so definitely a series, is there a way to hide the count before the box name if theres only one? Or use letters for the stamps In a box?
So more like
1. Box One
2. Box Two
3a Box Three
3b Box Three 2nd stamp....

https://www.atlasquest.com/showinfo.php?boxId=362697

Edit: definitely a bug. I added a fake second stamp and the box after was labeled "2" but then back to "1" for every box after that!

Yep, totally a bug. Sorry about that. It should be fixed now! =)

The stamps aren't really supposed to show numbers at all--you'll only see a number as part of the name of the box (i.e. "Stamp #1") if the stamp has no name and there's more than one stamp in the box.

If the stamp has a name, that'll be displayed. If there's only one stamp in the box and it doesn't have a name, it doesn't display a name at all.

When you're adding/editing a box, it'll display the stamp number as roman numerals. I thought about using letters, but I figured some people are going to occasionally hide boxes that have more than 26 stamps in it and I wasn't really sure what would happen if I tried to use letters for them. So I wanted to use numbers that basically allowed it to be limitless--but I also didn't want to use "normal" numbers so they wouldn't be confused with the box numbers. So I told AQ to use roman numerals instead. Which in most cases, I think people can understand easily enough. (i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, etc.)

By the time they get to 50+, it might be hard to figure out precisely which number stamp something is, but the actual number of the stamp never really seemed important. Mostly, I put it there more to delineate one stamp from another. But the roman numerals don't show up on the box details or clues or anything either.

-- Ryan

From your blog post:

Hmm, feelin' a tad judge-y? 😄

Seriously though, I'm sure the good peeps of our ranks appreciate your hard work and responsiveness to the hue and cries of desire.

_{(not mine, of course, but what are you going to do...)}

^{I kid, I kid}

I really don't care if people want to count or track stamps--it's the incorrect listings that cause confusion and problems.

It messes up counts, upsets people when their find counts change because the incorrect listings are deleted, or it'll upset people who don't think stamps should be listed, and it just causes angst and problems.

AQ had been intended to list boxes, though, and not stamps, so that's what I always enforced, and it's been a pain in the tush. And there's not really any reason to list them. If it's not a pathological need to list stamps, I'm not sure what it is.

AQ had always been about listing boxes since day 1. It wasn't controversial back then. It wasn't something I surprised everyone with. It's just been a long-simmering problem and it's my hope and wish this update will fix the problem once and for all--giving people a place to actually list stamps. An official way to track stamps. I hope it scratches that itch those people have.

-- Ryan

This works great. I just edited one of my Postal Boxes that is currently in circulation. There are 3 stamps in the box/envelope and they make one image. I originally listed the box with one stamp and added info in the clue indicating the 3 stamp sequence.

Adding the two additional stamps in the listing did not affect my P-count which is the way it should be imho. I don't usually have more than one stamp in a box, but it is becoming more and more common in the postal cohort.

LTCs and Postcards often have more than one stamp image--so there's that also.