I've been doing some rationalisation of the site in general and the BG section in particular. Some of the changes are in response to comments and requests while others have been done because browsers are now more capable.
What's new in the BG section ...
Rather than have large blocks of information, the data is now split up so that it can be presented in different ways. For instance all the information on Leg one may be viewed at once rather than having to go to the notes, then the page on water sources, then the training logistics page. The original way of viewing the info is still there. To aid this there is a menu option to switch between the different menu systems - your choice is saved in a cookie.
For those with advanced browsers there is the option to pull out microformat data such as geolocation, look for the "geo" icon.
The calculator now allows you to enter target times in 15 minute steps between 17hrs and 23 1/2 hours. The actual calculated times are roughly right - there may be rounding errors leading to 3 or 4 minutes difference in the total calculated time. Previously the "23hr" schedule was actually the 23 1/2hr schedule which confused people a bit.
There is an extra option in the calculator for the order in which Sergeant Man and High Raise are traversed. This option will write the correct details to the printed schedule. It will also select the appropriate description in the notes.
The cookie handling code should (repeat *should*) handle the upgrade from the old calculator to the new - if it doesn't just re-run the calculator which will cause the cookie to be updated.
Rather than myself having to continually check for changes to the route description there is a new page that allows you to add updates of up to 140 characters to the route description, these appear as post-it notes attached to the description pages. This is experimental - it was a bit awkward to test parts of the intended sequence offline. I'll see how this one goes, if it gets abused then I'll remove it or limit access to it.
The detailed notes have been improved and corrections made - the anticlockwise notes are now more in line with the clockwise ones - they were a bit sparse before.
The memory map overlay download has been converted to KML format which is compatible with Google Earth and Google Maps. If anyone has this data in other formats which they don't mind sharing then let me know.
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A lot of the changes are "behind the scenes" as it were: there was a lot of baggage from various experiments and old versions of the site that needed removing; the underlying structure has also changed to ease future changes and allow me to tweek things in a simpler manner.
Just what you see will depend on the browser you use.
Those using Safari or Chrome will see the most, followed closely by Firefox, Opera then Internet Explorer (any version) which unfortunately just can't cope with the latest (or even quite old) niceties though the information and behaviour is still there.
If there are any things that don't work as you might expect, drop me a pm with browser and OS details along with what's wrong.
Phew
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Originally Posted by andy k
