Orca Forum Improvements

DeeEmm posted 27th of May 2010 in Community Voice. 45 comments.

I've finally managed to clear my desk and have started to chip away at all of the small Dolphin related things that i wanted to achieve. This is mostly converting old mods that I have carried out on my site, into a more useful format so that I can post them up - both for free and for sale.

One of the bigger mods that I wanted to expand on before posting it, was to update Orca into something more usable.

Now before everyone chimes in about simply getting rid of it and replacing it with IVPB or phpBB or whatever, I believe that with a bit of time invested, it can be made more functional, in my opinion a native forum is much better than an add-on one.

Now I'm not talking about a complete re-write - just improvements - things like improved admin controls, layout tweaks, added functionality. For example - here's a screen-shot of my old D6 Site - i created post view counts and post counts for the forum and main forum indexes

http://www.deeemm.com/images/screenshots/1275016844397.png

i already have a few mods for it, but wanted to hear your opinions on how you think it can be improved - what would YOU like to see in Orca?

/DM

 
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Nathan Paton
Nathan Paton•27th of May 2010
 
You're late to the party. I've been working on improving Orca, as well. I've achieved this by taking Dolphin 7 and stripping everything away until only the bare minimum to run Orca is left. I've also kept the membership levels in for the sake of creating moderators. I've found that by basing off of Dolphin 7 and not stand-alone Orca, there is more that can be done to improve it. I'm still hard at work with improving Orca and making it a usable forum. I'll keep people posted, and I hope you do the see more same.
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•27th of May 2010
 
You got a URL?

/DM
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•27th of May 2010
 
OK - In no particular order, here's the stuff I've been working on...

unsticky posts
move threads

post views + topics / posts

mark posts as read
mark forums as read

view unread posts
view unanswered posts
view new posts
view active topics

latest post author
link to latest post

first / latest post hover preview

post reply button at bottom
return to top links
forum jump

online users
Bookmark topic
rss feed

stats block at bottom of forum?
user stats
Forward to see more post after posted
forum signatures

I have about half of these done.

/DM
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•27th of May 2010
 
This is just my list of notes and may not necessarily make a lot of sense (they do to me - lol)

/DM
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Nathan Paton
Nathan Paton•27th of May 2010
 
@DeeEmm: I've been working offline, mostly for convenience. For my next milestone, I'll see about uploading my work online to my labs web site. I've been doing some similar work, but I'll be interested in seeing how you implement them.
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houstonlively
houstonlively•27th of May 2010
 
I refuse to ever use Orca, but for those that do use it:

Sub Forums

Lose the Ajax

Convert post filtering to HTMLPurifier... like the rest of the site

Inline Moderation

Ability to assign moderators

Soft Delete

Inline moving of threads

Bad word filter

Attachment Uploading
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Nathan Paton
Nathan Paton•27th of May 2010
 
@houstonlively: I'm looking in to implementing HTMLPurifier, and making sure some things are still allowed to be posted. As for moderators and other forms of administration, since I am branching off from Dolphin 7 and not stand-alone Orca, I am able to have such features already implemented. Essentially, this is a very stripped version of Dolphin 7, where only the bare-minimum is still there. I've even gone as far as to remove unnecessary files, directories, and even SQL queries. If it's not needed see more by the forum, it's removed.
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•27th of May 2010
 
I was doing this to put it together as a premium mod, so currently it's all in mod format - ie changes here and there. Nowhere near as extensive as you seem to have gone tho. Not sure at this stage if I will keep it in this format, or simply serve up a complete module (probably best bet).

Could even be issued as a derivative work and make it completely separate / different beast to Orca - not really thought that far ahead yet - just wanted to get the mods done and worry about packaging it later

I see more did have the mods I had already completed running on my D6 site, but then I DOWNGRADED it to D7.01 (Grrrrrr). I will get them back up and running on D7 next week.

Found some more notes... (some doubles from above)

- list user posts
- Return to post after posted
- Image browser
- BB tags
- email post notifications,
- hide private forums from being aggregated in the RSS (front page) feed, and also from being shown in the forum spy.
- added post view counts to the forums, a jump to top link, the ability to move threads, the ability to 'Un-sticky' threads and forum signatures.
- changed the text 'flagged topics' to 'watched topics', just to make it more user friendly
- Being forwarded to post after posting
- Forum quick jump
- Automated link, video and image posting
- BBCode
- Forum ranks
- Image browser for inserting images (have already implemented this for some admin functions)
- Video browser for inserting videos
- Ability to make users moderators + advanced post moderation functions
- User control panel for forums settings
1. Small Link Or Stats Block For Members Letting Them Know How Many They Have Not Read
2. Mark Read and/or Mark All Read
3. Configure Notifications.
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•27th of May 2010
 
HL - File uploading is already handled by Files module

JFYI - The TinyMCE Browser mod I have also handles File uploads.

Would probably include this as part of overall mod too.

/DM
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•27th of May 2010
 
Ok - there's my cards on the table - Whatchoogot Gladys?

;)

/DM
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Nathan Paton
Nathan Paton•27th of May 2010
 
@DeeEmm: It seems we're using two different approaches to reach the same goal. It will be interesting to see each other's end result. As for my work, I am planning on creating a new installer and releasing my work freely under an equal license to that of Dolphin (Creative Commons).
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•28th of May 2010
 
Yeah - there's a big hole in Dolphin - and it's called orca - it's like the missing link - lol.

Long had the idea to improve it - but it's just getting enough free time to do something about it, hopefully I can get something back up and running next week. Will shoot you a link when it's running.

/DM
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houstonlively
houstonlively•28th of May 2010
 
Ughhh.... BBCode. The only reason BBcode exists, is because forums were invented before HTMLPurifier. I was going to say, that a forum that did NOT use bbcode, and used htmlpurifier instead, would be unique in the marketplace, if it had all the right features. It might even make Orca a viable standalone commercial product.
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houstonlively
houstonlively•28th of May 2010
 
RE "HL - File uploading is already handled by Files module"

I was referring to the feature that real forum software like IPB and vBulletin has, and that is the ability to attach files to individual posts. I guess you have to be familiar with IPB or vBulletin to understand.
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•28th of May 2010
 
LOL @ Real forum software.

I amuses me that Orca upsets you so much - lol.

It's funny - when I migrated some old users to dolphin from phpBB - they all said the same - the forum is crap - but they all still post there, and no one really misses the extra garnish that a lot of these other products have, after all the main idea is simply to communicate and Orca achieves this adequately. It's not what the forum DOES - it's more a case of what it CONTAINS.

But I know what you mean about file see more attachments, just don't want to replicate too much. Dolphins main issue is that it does not link the two together - posting images + the gallery / posting file attachments + the file module.

However, The TinyMCE browser mods handles it nicely enough.

The HTMLPurifier might be an idea worth looking into. The BB code idea was simply to accommodate those who are familiar with it - it's an addition to the editor - you can either use the TinyMCE controls, OR type BB code directly into the editor - it's just legacy support for those migrating from other platforms.

Change is hard enough for most people, making the transition smoother is the key.

/DM
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tomakali
tomakali•28th of May 2010
 
Someone go and raid boonex office to get a copy of whats there in trident forums and work on it.
its good to dump orca...
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houstonlively
houstonlively•28th of May 2010
 
DE... Orca just stresses me out because I go back a long way with vBulletin and IPB. I have no problem with Orca for really light duty use. I actually prefer it for the groups and events forums. For the main forums, I sure like how IPB looks on my site. Besides, with IPB integrated, I easily added the IPB arcade mod (Free). Being able to add IPB apps is very attractive to me.

HTMLPurifer is the way to go. The only reason it's not in Orca in D7, is because Boonex was too lazy to put it in see more there. I think what they still use, is a derivative of safehtml.... created by some now deseased Russian guy. There is no documentation for it, and white listing will be a big headache. HTMLPurifer in Orca will make your life a lot easier when users start demanding the ability to embed videos from sites other than youtube.

As far as BBCode goes, I don't see how it's possible to implement that in a true sense, without giving up a lot of existing html formatting features... I could be wrong on that though.

I really believe that the lack of BBCode, and the inclusion of the usual mainstream features, are the things that could make a standalone Orca a viable commercial product
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•28th of May 2010
 
HL I too have been a long time user of phpBB, and I agree with orca being suitable for light use - on my site it slots in quite nicely - this is because on my site the main focus is the blogs, photos & video sections; the forum is simply a bonus, and in reality little used. But on a site where the focus is more on the forum, this is obviously a different issue, especially when you consider that it would be in direct competition with other forum based sites in the same niche - sites using phpBB see more / IPB / etc.

The things I like most about orca is that it is a native module, and it is visually DIFFERENT to other forums - it's a lot cleaner looking. In the web, sometimes it's being different that gives you the edge, otherwise it's simply ANOTHER phpBB / IPB / whatever integration with a different colour skin. These other forums are so well known, they are instantly recognisable by their layout, and in my opinion look like they added on as an afterthought, rather than looking like they are supposed to be there.

Re not improving orca in D7 being laziness - If you look at the codebase for orca and compare it against D6 - orca is actually a LOT more advanced - IMHO D7 has now been brought up to speed with orca. The main changes to orca for D7 were simply to improve the integration - there's only one instance now - instead of two - one for groups and one for the normal forum. I think orca was not touched in D7 simply because it was already at the level it was required to be at and there was more work to do on the rest of the site. IMHO D7 was really a codebase update - not really a feature update, D7 does not really do too much more than D6 did, it just does it differently.

cont...
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•28th of May 2010
 
It would not have surprised me if orca would have been next on the cards to get updated, but with the current status of the main code, I cannot see this happening in the near future, there is simply too much work to do with current bugfixes.

RE BBcode - It is actually a lot easier to implement than you think - you simply parse the submitted content through a bunch of regex replace statements - one for each tag. I used this method to create my own templating system for my CMS, which includes some see more special tags available to the user, in much the same way as BBtags are. The only real issue is deciding how to present the option to the user. Adding an additional interface may be a bit clunky, not having an interface and still parsing BBtags that are typed in directly is good as it's transparent to other users, but perhaps having some options for users to decide themselves is the best choice - after all - what you and I want is really not important - it's what the users want that keeps them coming back.

Regarding mainstream features - it's pretty much imperative that the forum can safely post all current video formats, and easily accommodate more as they appear, and with the advent of HTML5 this is now easily possible using the video tag - this basically works the same way as the img tag does, the only issue, is that it is supported in every browser except explorer - trust Microsoft to continually hold back the web.

cont...
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•28th of May 2010
 
I think that forums in general are set for a revolution pretty soon - they are still in the same 10 year old format, pretty soon someone will come up with a better way of displaying this kind of info - the technology is now there - someone just needs to implement it. Despite orca's failings, it is actually an attempt to take some of this technology (AJAX) and apply it in improving the user experience, obviously this has not been completely successful, for a number of reasons, some things are great see more - such as the forum spy, but other things suck - like the AJAX post submission.

/DM
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•28th of May 2010
 
This 2000 char limit is absolutely stupid.

Boonex fix this shit please. (along with all of the other issues with unity)

Web sites are all about user experience - and this one here continually SUCKS.

/DM
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DosDawg
DosDawg•28th of May 2010
 
ahha, here is a doozey. now they say they are going to offer hosting for dolphin, so i want to see what the deal is with TOS and TOU. as well all know there have been incidents that we have witnessed from the forum posts where accounts were suspended for excessive resource usage:

i had a chat with live support, and this is what i got from him. my main inquiry from this chat was what does 'unlimited bandwidth' actually mean.well we all know that an answer could not be provided but here is the conversation:


You see more are now chatting with Julian Vanzetti (Sales)

terabyte: julian how are you doing
Julian Vanzetti: Hello
Julian Vanzetti: How can I assist you?
terabyte: i am here to inquire about the dolphin hosting you are offering over on boonex.com
terabyte: i also have an inquiry in regards to your advert of "unlimited bandwidth" and what that actually consists of?
terabyte: this $2.95/month hosting, what exactly would one expect from such a package?
terabyte: do you have dolphin accounts on these servers now, and what is the lifespan of a dolphin account on one of these servers before one is in a position of forced upgrade.
terabyte: where are your terms of service and terms of usage, in regards to server resources, CPU and RAM
terabyte: what is the load capacity on the RMS servers that you offer/
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DosDawg
DosDawg•28th of May 2010
 
Julian Vanzetti: Unlimited bandwith means we do not put a limit to the amount of traffic that is coming through the shared servers.Say like 500GB,1000GB...
terabyte: so the bandwidth is not metered, because in essence there is no such thing as 'unlimited bandwidth'
Julian Vanzetti: Here is an example of a dolphin account on out servers. http://merobook.com/
Julian Vanzetti: Please refer to http://www.pacifichost.com/tos.shtml
Julian Vanzetti: for our terms of services.
terabyte: ok thanks for see more that. now as for the terminology 'unlimited' i would like that defined as knowing full well there is no such beast as unlimited, so would like to know what this means on pacifichost.com
Julian Vanzetti: Like I told you.
Julian Vanzetti: You will not be warned of band with being exceeded beyond your limited value.
Julian Vanzetti: Is is mentioned in that sense.
terabyte: but surely there is a limit
Julian Vanzetti: It is unlimited in that sense.
terabyte: as unlimited bandwidth just truly does not exist
Julian Vanzetti: Like I told you.
Julian Vanzetti: It is unlimited in teh way that i specified.
terabyte: meaning that it is a farce
terabyte: ok next question, how many accounts do you put on one server for the dolphin hosting, are the servers that you are hosting dolphin on, configured specifically for dolphin, or are there other software running on those servers that may now have or in the future present conflicting configurations with dolphin?
Julian Vanzetti: I am unable to provide you that info.
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DosDawg
DosDawg•28th of May 2010
 
terabyte: can you provide me with a contact who would have that type of information. as you may or may not know, dolphin is an extremely dynamic platform, that has some rather resource intensive moments, and to be able to utilize a server with a configuration compliant with the developers recommendations, you would basically have to have something dedicated to the dolphin platform.
terabyte: who there on the staff have used dolphin, and know its limits and bounds?
Julian Vanzetti: https://support.pacifichost.com/index.php?_m=tickets&_a=submit
Julian see more Vanzetti: Please post a ticket there.
Julian Vanzetti: in the presales department.
terabyte: ok great
Julian Vanzetti: We will follow you up on the details.
terabyte: indeed
Julian Vanzetti: Thank you.
terabyte: just doing a little research for the dolphin hosting platform, as i seen there was a post that pacifichost is now a 'preferred hosting provider' for the dolphin platform
Julian Vanzetti: We do provide dolphin support.
Julian Vanzetti: Please post a ticket for your entire queries.
terabyte: when you refer to dolphin support, can you elaborate on what you are calling dolphin support?
Julian Vanzetti: I am sorry,I meant we support Dolphin.
terabyte: meaning you dont support dolphin, but you will host the script
Julian Vanzetti: Yes,
Julian Vanzetti: that is correct.
terabyte: because the term 'support' would infer you have working knowledge of dolphin to be able to provide support should a client run into an issue with their site
Julian Vanzetti: That we do not provide
terabyte: correct
terabyte: thanks for your time, will submit a ticket and see what kinda of responses i can get from those inquiries that you were unable to answer.
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DosDawg
DosDawg•28th of May 2010
 
so as you can see, the 'unlimited bandwidth' is once again called out and proven to be a tactic, because the unknowing would fall for such.

now i continued on my quest with this and read their TOS as suggested from the sales agent, and this is what i have found:


20. System and Network Resource Usage
An Individual Shared, Premium or Reseller Hosting account may not:

1. Use 25% or more of system resources for longer than 90 seconds. There are numerous activities that could cause such see more problems; these include: CGI scripts, FTP, PHP, HTTP, etc.
2. Run any type of interactive real-time chat applications that require server resources. Remotely-hosted services are fully allowed.
3. Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes at any point in time on the server. This includes any and all daemons, such as IRCD.
4. Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network.
5. Run any BitTorrent application, tracker, or client.
6. Run any type of web spider or indexer (including Google Cash / AdSpy)
7. Participate in any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities
8. Run any gaming servers such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Battlefield 1492, etc.
9. Run cron entries with intervals of less than 15 minutes.
10. When using PHP include functions for including a local file, include the local file rather than the URL. Instead of include("http://yourdomain.com/include.php") use include("include.php")

PacificHost hosting accounts operate on shared resources. Excessive use or abuse of these shared system and network resources by one customer may have a negative impact on all other customers. PacificHost reserves the right to suspend or terminate any hosting account deemed to adversely affect server performance or network integrity.
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DosDawg
DosDawg•28th of May 2010
 
ok lets focus some attention on a few of these rules here:

1. use 25% or more of system resources for longer than 90 seconds. we know that dolphin has had some issues with resource usage on a site with no activity so this would warrant a suspension immediately according to TOS ITEM 20.

2. run any type of interactive real-time chat applications that require server resources. DUH AV CHAT warrants suspension

7. file-sharing peer-to-peer. both video and audio is a form of P2P, and there is also see more the file sharing module on Dolphin 7. reason for suspension there as well.

9. Run cron entries with intervals of less than 15 minutes. SUSPENDED as well all know, Dolphin supposedly requires the cron to fire every minute.

ok so with this, and i am not beating these guys up because they want to step on the scene and host dolphin. I am showing what is the truth. their TOS stipulate the rules and under the laws of the US which is where this hosting entity is located, according to the whois, if you violate these TOS, which most do not read, then you are SOL.
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DosDawg
DosDawg•28th of May 2010
 
oh holy cow, i just posted all of this on the flipping wrong blog. now i gotta copy and paste it to the correct area. so sorry DM --> nutcase sometimes.

Regards,
DosDawg
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•28th of May 2010
 
LMAO - no worries Dawg - makes me look popular ;)

/DM
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One20
One20•29th of May 2010
 
LMAO - what an awesome blog.
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DosDawg
DosDawg•29th of May 2010
 
houston, your head has vanished. has anybody seen HL's head?

Regards,
DosDawg
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•29th of May 2010
 
lol - must be that haircut - it gone broke the system

/DM
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One20
One20•30th of May 2010
 
@DosDawg -- his head is back and it looks like he's lost it!

I know that face. What movie is that from?

Sorry DM...lol...Good work with the Orca files btw. Will you be selling the updates as a mod anytime soon?
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•30th of May 2010
 
see more@One20,

My intention is to package all the mods together and then make them available as one single upgrade - probably as both another module, and as a set of instructions for modified sites.

Not exactly sure when at this stage, depends on how much spare time I get to work on it.

If it looks like it's taking too long, I might release it in stages, with upgrades available to those who have already purchased it, although my preference it just to get it finished and release it as intended.

/DM
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cbassthefish
cbassthefish•31st of May 2010
 
Come on One20. The movie is The Shining :o) Probably of Jack's best performances. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/
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One20
One20•31st of May 2010
 
@cbassthefish thanks for that. I had a mind block that day...lol...
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•1st of June 2010
 
Just a bit of an update for those who are interested...

I will be keeping a log of the build progress over on my site, mostly as I cannot post screen shots here, plus I do not want to maintain two separate blogs on the subject.

For those interested, please visit - http://www.deeemm.com/resources/boonex-dolphin/3-orca-mod.html#49

Thanks for the feature suggestions. I will post back when a demo is available.

/DM
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•2nd of June 2010
 
A very very Alpha version is now up for those interested - http://fred.deeemm.com/forum
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SkyForum
SkyForum•30th of June 2010
 
I was just there. I really expected more involvement but no matter, I really like what you are doing and I have added my 2 cents worth. Please don't become discouraged. I think your fixes will be uber popular once they are presented.
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patrick81
patrick81•3rd of July 2010
 
I hate you, DeeEmm! I don't know what to do with my phpBB integration once this is out. Hmmmmm.... Great idea!! :) How soon will this be ready?
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patrick81
patrick81•3rd of July 2010
 
Can you improve smilies like phpBB?

Url: http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/6528/forumk.png

I absolutely love emoticons! They makes the forum more attractive. :D
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patrick81
patrick81•3rd of July 2010
 
Sorry I meant the phpBB layout. I can get my own smilies.
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•4th of July 2010
 
Patrick, It's on hold at the moment, Andrew mentioned some plans for Orca and an announcement to be released soon - but still waiting for this to materialise.

/DM
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patrick81
patrick81•4th of July 2010
 
ah no plm. I would def go for something like this. :)
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