@myBase

In the military community we hear these words often. They’re supposed to be words to live by, to strive for excellence.

Attention to detail

I’m working on an upgrade to AtMyBase right now which, if I were to title it, I would name it “attention to detail”. What the heck does that mean, right? Essentially, I re-working the place pages, and I’ve give myself 2 weeks longer to tweak and polish the crap out of it, before releasing it.

The place pages are being broken up by their content. The first page you’ll see will be the overview page. It shows descriptions of the place, and previews of reviews, tips, directions, etc…

Then each section is a separate part: reviews, tips, photos, and directions. Each section will beautifully show you the content AND give you elegant tools to help you both understand that you can contribute, and make it easier to do so.

Above and beyond

When I said elegant tools, I meant it. The forms used to contribute are a short as they can be. They’re also immediately noticeable. You won’t miss the fact that there is something you can do on the page. Previously many actions were hidden behind buttons (which many would likely never click).

Then make them operate smoothly. The forms are easy to complete, and easy to submit. They’ll stay out of your way as best they can, while giving you the power to contribute when you want to (and remind you that you can). 

The next update is going to be great, can’t wait to release it for you!

Now when you view lists of places, they show a large photo - overlaid with the place’s name. This solves 2 problems:

1. Makes the list much less boring to look at
2. Gives you a glimpse at what the place offers

Spent the last couple days digging through all the code which authenticates members on AtMyBase. Found a whole bunch of optimizations, and the result is a faster, more responsive AtMyBase which also more reliably keeps you logged in!

If you were experiencing a strange, intermittent, log-out while in the middle of using AtMyBase, you should no longer experience that awful bug.

Facebook Permissions

Also, I added the user_photos permission request to logins. What this does is ask you to authorize AtMyBase to read your photos on Facebook. This is to allow you to attach your Facebook photos to AMB places!

I spent a bit of time today updating the database behind www.atmybase.com. There were some stale index issues I had to resolve. An astute visitor may have noticed that the list of articles was sometimes not showing the latest articles correctly.

This problem should now be resolved, AND as an added bonus, the pages should load more quickly!

If you been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of places nearby Yokota, over 13,000 as of this writing, last night’s upgrade may interest you.

Rather than show you every single place around the base, many of which aren’t yet translated to English, you’ll only see places others have “touched”.

“Touched” means that the place has an English name set, or at least one description/review/tip/directions, etc… essentially, someone else in the community has added some bit of information to the place.

It seems to be working

If you look at the Indian Restaurant category, you’ll see it shows you a little over 10 places. You’ll also notice there is a button to “Show more”. If you click it, AtMyBase will show you all the places it knows of in this category, around Yokota (which is a nearly 90 places).

You’ll notice many of the places are in Japanese, or partially Japanese, or AtMyBase has no information about them. If you’ve been to one of these places, share something about them so others can find it more easily!

What do you think? Helpful?

After weeks of coding, designing, refactoring, consulting with members of AMB, and quite a lot of blood, sweat, and tears; the new version of AtMyBase.com has finally arrived!

What’s New?

While the overall goal/purpose of AMB has not changed, quite a bit has, checkout this change-log:

• Responsive Design - now AMB will change it’s dimensions based on your browser window size. Also, its ready to better support mobile devices like your iPhone, or Andriod (it looks really cool on an iPad)
• Progressive Design - AMB works on Internet Explorer, but you won’t get the “full experience” if you’re on that browser (it doesn’t support all the cool internet design standards). However, if you use Firefox or Chrome, you’ll see AMB in “all it’s glory!”
• Fast - AMB does a lot of data caching and relies very little on graphics to achieve a great design. This means it can load more quickly, instead of making you wait for graphics to load.
• Better Forms - when you’re ready to share places, upload photos, or create a new document on AMB, the forms to make that happen are significantly streamlined to help you complete your task, headache free! They’ll validate your entry on-the-fly, letting you know if you’ve entered something wrong, before submitting the form. Also, it will only show you parts of the form at a time, to make large forms easier to deal with.
• Auto-completing, Morphing Search - On nearly every tab of the main navigation, you’ll find a search box for that content. I call this “morphing” search boxes. For example, if you’re on the “off-base places” tab, the search box will search for off-base places. If you’re on the “Docs” tab, it will search for docs. In addition, they’ll auto-complete, to help you more quickly find things (or maybe even help you discover new things you didn’t know existed before!)
• Bigger Map + Driving Directions - the map with a line drawn from the base to the place you’re interested in, has been enlarged to help make it easier to gauge where you are. Also, there are now textual driving directions as well (pro tip: click each leg of the directions, it will center the map on that point)
• Increased Photo Quality - when you upload a photo to AMB, it will get re-sized and compressed to make sure it can load quickly when someone views it. The compression algorithm has been improved to make your photos look nicer!
• More Social Integration - a few new Facebook features have been included, to help you share places/docs with your Facebook friends. Also, you can see what your friends are doing on the site as well.
• More - the list can go on, but I think you get the point, there have been A LOT of changes. I hope you enjoy them, and the new AMB helps you enjoy your base more.

Last, but not least, it just plain looks cooler!! At least I think so, what do you think?