• Automatic "buffer" preservation when users log into and create accounts - allowing ATIServer to always remember where users should be redirected to once they are logged in
• Cleaner AutoForward emails - now including the username that they are from, a "view all messages link", and slightly enhanced formatting
• Select element dropdowns should now always be positioned correctly
• TinyMCE editor Media plugin has been disabled to allow for custom object embeds - which allows you to embed any kind of object, but also eliminates the handy object preview that the textarea formerly used to indicate where objects were embedded. Tradeoffs...
• New "Alignment" styles added to the TinyMCE editor font style dropdown for more text formatting control.
• User registration now makes sure that usernames don't have strange chars in them - and all known areas in which usernames with strange chars could cause problems have been fixed. If you have been having problems messaging, updating your profile, etc, please let me know if the errors still persist.
• Better looking "update profile" user page
• ATIServer's "vibrant" skin has a minor fix that should keep submenus from occasionally choking when there were just enough menu items in the main level nav menu to trigger dropping the search field to the sub menu

• Automatic duplicate comment detection and correction!
• Home page has been updated with a link to a new article on "PlexPedia's Vision"

• Earth page cleaned up a bit, Earth category selector is no longer a super fancy modal based tree (that didn't work half the time), but now just a basic select list that always works
• Craigslist HTML generator (on the Local page) now includes the item's location
• Home page has been updated with a link to a new article on "Safarri's Vision"

(Specifically those of you inhabiting the Unites States of America)

With the presidential elections near at hand, I would like to take this opportunity to share my thoughts with you on the important civic duty of voting. I want to encourage you to vote for principle, and not to waste your vote on a candidate that would horrify our founding fathers.

Yes, game theory is important. In certain cases, I agree that it could make sense to cast a vote for someone that isn't your first choice to help prevent someone that would be your last choice from becoming the president. But in my opinion, arguments like the above have no place in discussions regarding this election.

As far as anyone can tell, Obama may not be a natural born citizen of the USA, and would therefore be constitutionally ineligible to hold the office of president. Both Obama and McCain have contemptible positions on the sanctity of human life. Neither Obama nor McCain have any respect for the 2nd amendment - or the rest of the constitution, for that matter. Listen to them debate - they have few things to offer besides socialism and meaningless, empty mantras of "change" and "straight talk".

As many of you know, I have long supported Ron Paul - and although he has switched gears to the Campaign for Liberty, Chuck Baldwin is now carrying Paul's banner.

I honestly don't expect to see a "third party" candidate win the election - but by voting for someone you can truly support, you can at least have a clear conscience that you weren't a party to one small step in the gradual demise of our once-great republic.

Below is a short video I produced nearly a year ago.
Before you cast your vote this year, please take a minute to consider the implications of the course you are taking.

-Aubrey

Aside from lots of new features like greater efficiency and an even more amazing effects toolkit, the update also enabled an enhanced slideshow system throughout the ATI network - which is most noticeable on Safarri.

The new slideshows support a built in auto-hiding "controller", intelligently scrolling thumbnails, and on Safarri, instantaneous in page "lightbox" style expanded image viewing.

The new slideshows fix the bug in Safarri's previous system that sometimes caused incorrect expanded versions of images to be loaded, and are also more space efficient on Safarri's optimized ad pages since they display all image thumbnails on a single line.

More to come!

-Aubrey 

This is the first ever item published using the newly added "shared categories", which means that it will automatically show up in the "ATI Network" category of the forum of every site in the ATI Network.
Previous announcements were mostly posted in Safarri's forum, before which they were posted to a special category on PlexPedia, Before which they were posted to a long list of text on the homepage of the ATI Network :-)
The new shared ATI Network category should become the permanent way for everyone to keep track of updates.

Without further ado, here are the most important recent updates:

• ATIServer:
  
  • GUI Refactoring:
    The core ATIServer "GUI Toolkit" has been greatly enhanced.
    The benefits? Slightly faster page load times, and much prettier and more consistent looking button, lists, toolbars, and forms.  You can see the new styles as you browse, or preview them all at the new GUI Playground
    
    One of the coolest GUI changes are the new "Select" menus, which are now completley js powered and blend in perfectly with the rest of our customized form elements.
    
    
  • Tons of new features:
    Most importantly,  ATIServer now has the capibility to automatically combine and optimize CSS and JS resources server side, which increases page load speed by minimizing http requests.
    
    There have also been tons of other server side enhancements and bugfixes (Such as the numerous improvements to the template "skins" - which enabled the "theme unification" project), but they won't be as notacable to end users.
  
  
• ATI Network:
  
  • Theme Unification:
    Every Site in the Network now uses the same theme! Cooler yet, every site in the network can switch themes on the fly based on your preference in the new "My Settings" menu located on the right side of the Network Toolbar (Which can also dynamically translate your page into different languages).
    Yes, we will miss the 3D blue theme of PlexPedia and the shiny "blobs" of the fun zone, but they will live on in the soon to be added museum :-)
    The ATI Network sites who's looks were completley redone include PlexPedia, the Fun Zone, the Network Home, and AubreyFalconer.com.
    
    
  • New ATI Design Site:
    The ATI Design site has been completley redone (And is the only network member which doesn't use the new theme system). Now includes a super cool reflective 3D project carousel, and awesome backlit carbon fiber elements!
    
    
  • Shared Categories:
    As explained in the introduction above, PlexPedia groups can now share categories! This will be perfect to keep track of announcements - and the newly introduced bug tracker.
    
    
  • Bug Tracker:
    PlexPedia now has a new type of data it tracks - "bugs"! To facilitate bug tracking, PlexPedia also has a new feature for item "Status", which can be controlled by the submitter of the item from a dropdown on the main item page.
  
  
• ATI Hosting: 
  • ATIServer has upgraded to a custom configured Ubuntu Linux VPS, and is currently running inside of Lighttpd. This actually happened over the course of several weeks much earlier in the year, but hasn't been oficially announced yet.
    
    This is accompanied by large performance increases and enhanced capibilities, and will provide us with plenty of room to grow.

More great things to come!

Merry Christmas to all,

-Aubrey