New Look. New Policies.

Call me crazy, but if I'm going from version 2.0 to 3.0, and I'm making changes to the GUI for the purpose of user-friendliness, then I feel the need to make the "theme" of SURRAnet look fresh and new as well. Unfortunately, artistic design is not my greatest strength, but I think I've come up with a new look that is pretty "cool". I was actually inspired by the Personas feature of Firefox 3.6. Unlike Personas, the look of SURRAnet is not customizable at this time, but hopefully it's easy enough on the eyes that users will enjoy the experience of spending time in SURRAnet. Who says that efficient must be boring?

The new policies are not SURRAnet related, but Google Groups related. I want to love Google Groups, but the nonstop spam makes it very hard to do so. In order to prevent spam from stacking up in my moderation folder, I changed the policies so that I must explicitly invite members to join. You cannot request membership directly to my SURRAnet group, but you can, through this blog, email me and request membership that way. This should thwart the spammers. So far, the group isn't very active, nor do I expect it to be until SURRAnet "takes off", assuming that ever happens. That said, if you wish to start a deep discussion regarding a particular piece of code in SURRAnet, the group is there for this purpose. Otherwise, you can always just comment on one of my blog posts.

Today I am focusing on SURRAnet for much of the day, except during Steve Job's announcement :-)