vBulletin 3.8 Boards

i'm more of a challenging guy you know, i'm not a negative man...

btw, you can base-jump the Everest if you dare!

[IvyKeepMommy]

Originally Posted by lasto

whats the difference in codin between 3.7 and 3.8 ????
Is there any difference at all ? Would all hacks that are coded for 3.8 work on 3.7 and if so then why the different sections ?
Its very confusing as next week 3.9 will be out and week after 3.10 - how are we meant to keep up with this all the time.
Lets face it vbulletin board in its standard state is not the best to look at,so we all grab a few hacks and style etc and re-mod our boards to the way we like them - then you bring out a new version and because we got used to our hacks etc we are unable to upgrade because they dont work on newer versions.
Vbull should make any update to its software backwards compatible so old hacks still work regardless if the core system has changed.

While that is a nice concept, in practice it won't work because it would force all coders to use the same style and would also prevent a lot of development from happening.

In 3.7 the social groups concept was introduced... one of the complaints was that it didn't offer forums for the social groups, so someone wrote a modification for it.

vB listened to the complaints and wrote social forums into vB 3.8 -- obviously the hack written for 3.7 won't work as it now conflicts with something offered in 3.8. Now the author of that mod (or similar) may still not find that the new social forums in 3.8 meet there needs so they modify their mod to work with 3.8.

As for 3.9/3.10, I assume you were just using them as examples to make a point and you don't really expect those versions to come out since they have been working on a vB 4 for well over a year now.

The majority of my installed modifications that I ran on 3.6 worked just fine when I installed 3.7 -- a few didn't, but most of them were "fixed" by the authors and worked in a relatively short period of time -- which is one of the benefits of the beta period.

As 3.8 is released and used, coders will find features to write modifications specifically for and those may be specific only to 3.8 and CAN'T be backwards compatible to older versions because the code may simply not exist in the older versions.

It's a fact of life with software and your choice could be to pick a version and stick with it and never upgrade -- that would certainly be YOUR choice to do so, but I think many of the rest of us are ok with the upgrade process.

[Zachariah]

Originally Posted by Danny.VBT

Unfortunately, spending more time dealing with upgrades is one of the consequences of installing any third party modifications.

- just updated a site w/ 3.6.8 to 3.8 B1
- 321 templates outdated !!!

[high]* Zachariah runs to hide[/high]

[KW802]

Originally Posted by lasto

Vbull should make any update to its software backwards compatible so old hacks still work regardless if the core system has changed.

Microsoft has tried that approach with Windows. It is not working out too well. I would be darn surprised if the next major version of vB 4.0 does not break most of the existing mods.

[Ohiosweetheart]

Originally Posted by KW802

....
I would be darn surprised if the next major version of vB 4.0 does not break most of the existing mods.

I'm pretty much resigned to that notion.

4.0 WILL break all existing mods, that's why we have these versions until then, making the coders do a little brain work...

[Paul M]

I expect vb 4.0 to break almost every 3.5/3.6/3.7/3.8 mod just the same as the move from 3.0 to 3.5 did. No one made much of a fuss then.

[lasto]

cause they all to polite to complain and even if they dont complain it dont mean it aint annoying.
Instead of always bringing out a new version why dont u do add on packs that add more functionality ?

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by lasto

Instead of always bringing out a new version why dont u do add on packs that add more functionality ?

Maybe because I am nothing to do with Jelsoft or vBulletin.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by lasto

cause they all to polite to complain and even if they dont complain it dont mean it aint annoying.
Instead of always bringing out a new version why dont u do add on packs that add more functionality ?

Because it complicates the process of writing the code. When you design a large application you make mistakes in the design that you will not catch until later down the road. The programming language will also mature and change over the years as well.

When you make a major version jump, say from version 2 to 3, or version 3.0 to 3.5, or version 3.5 to 4.0. You'll have a chance to re-write and fix "core" problems in your design. Fixing these "core" problems will break a lot of things elsewhere that depend on core functionality.

What I'm getting at is two major points;

1) Making major changes is a good thing. Software will always evolve over time just like everything else in the field of computing. If that bothers you you're in the wrong field.

2) Backwards compatibility is a bad thing most of the time. To offer 100% compatibility with third party code requires emulating old behavior of the software, sometimes even emulating "useful bugs" that third party code depends on. It's never perfect and there will always be a piece of third party code that won't run...do you change you backwards compatibility layer in that case to support that single piece of code? If you answered yes you're setting yourself up for bloated code and a battle you'll never win.