Even if it is not a full working FTX, it is still a small present for the todays birthday.
Today, it is exactly one year ago, where I released the FTX, the Clan's own TrackBase. But it has never been really finished... So now I want to present you a first look into the new FTX: The new FT eXchange!

Do not look only on the visible things, you won't see that much. An input field, some icons, and a box telling sth. about parameters. You will even not be able to find any tracks with this preview.
Important are the mechanics behind this frontend. I will try to help you seeing these mechanics

How the new FTX Browser works behind the scenes
Enter something into the input field and wait few moments. Do you see, how the inputted value has been written several times in the lower box? Okay, nothing special, until you know, what really happened.
The "Current Parameters" should update immediately while typing something (or clicking the Icons). These values are those, currently written in the browse box, and remembered for later use.
After a small delay, your input is copied to "Requested Parameters": This means, that the FTX has sent your input to the server, now waiting for an answer. (This delay is forced, to avoid many requests at once. Only if one second nothing changed, it really gets sent.)
Again, after another small delay, your input should get printed below "Responded Parameters". This is, where the script received the answer from the server, in future the results of your new search, which will get printed into your browser. (At the moment, the server is only returning the parameters, to show that the request is completed.) So a change of the "Responded Parameters" means, that the current shown Tracklist will have changed

So you changed an input... and only few seconds later these changes has been applied without any other activity. No pushing of a "Search" button anymore

A more detailled look onto the "Browse Tracks" box
The input field for the Track name should be self-explanatory: Enter a value, and wait.
Instead of having a DropDown box for the Environment and Difficulty, you now have some icons, allowing you to search for several Envis/Difficulties at once. Each icon is freely selectable and unselectable by a single click.
You want to search for Island-Only tracks? No problem: Simply double-click the Island-Icon, it will then be selected and all other Environments will get unselected (There will be a hint in the final version, telling this to the user.)
(Btw: The number of the parameters "envi" and "diff" are a binary representation of which icons are not selected. The reason is, that I wanted to have 0 representing "all Icons selected" as initial value. So a missing "envi" means "envi=0" means "all Envis selected" )

Deep Linking even though the page is always the same
Also annoyed from the "External Link" on TMX? Or from the always same URL in the old FTX after searching?
Change again a value, and then directly look into the address bar. In that moment, where the paramters get written into "Requested Parameters", the URL changed. Click the Back button in your browser: You should now have your previous search, with your previous parameters.
Want to give a search query to a third person? Copy&Paste the address bar, as known from everywhere: http://funtrackers.bplaced.net/newexchan...=universal.

@ kastun: Don't try it, you have no chance to hack the parameters by entering sth. like "dummy/foo=bar" into the name field The only problems are caused by the %, it seems to be a bug in the used script for deep linking.


Time for Playing ^^
Now it's your turn: Play a bit with the parameters, and look, how the page reacts. Afterwards, feel free to give some feedback: How does this new method of "browsing" feel (even if no results are given)? Any questions to the FTX? Any bugs? Or any suggestions?

As last information: The browse-box is not complete yet, there will be a DropDown box for selecting the Author, and some icons for selecting the length of the tracks. But I think the first 3 parameters are already enough for testing it

FT»Marcel

Looks great, much better then TMX.
They should buy your search mask

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Hmm, I expected a little bit more feedback... Nevertheless, the first update

I completed now the Browse Box, by integrating first the Author DropDown, and second the icons for choosing the Length. The Length icon are not final now, this was only a first try, and I think these icons can be improved a bit. But as placeholders they are enough

Another new feature is, that un-selecting the last icon of a group will re-select all of the icons of this group. E.g. unselecting all Environments has no sense, as definitly no tracks will be found, so I thought that this could be a possibility to "reset" the icons group. So now, with a single click, you toggle an icon, with a double click, you select only the clicked icon, with a triple click, you select all icons of the group (As said in first post: There will be a hint explaining this ^^)

Next thing, I updated, is the script in the background: Now, the given parameters are analyzed, and thrown into the database. The returned result is printed in a very simple way: ID and TrackName should be enough to see, that the script really searches for the track
(My favourite test parameter: http://funtrackers.bplaced.net/newexchange/#/name=uni )

Relating to the "Responed Parameters": "count" says, how many tracks matched the criteria (and thus has been returned as result), "tracks = [object Object]" should get ignored, as this is a side effect of sending the tracklist

How can I delete a track? The Beta version of Snow Stylez is still in FTX.

In old FTX: When viewing a Track, you have "Change Details", and within there, on right side over the Screenshot Box, you should have a link "Remove Track" (Last link has a missing image, so it may not printed as "Remove Track" in all browsers )
Or use the Direct Link

Btw: The new FT eXchange will not support Beta Tracks any longer, as it is better to post them directly (eg. as attachment) in the (internal) Betatest-Forum. This means that all Tracks marked as Beta will get deleted, when the new FTX is ready to replace the old FTX (But as you know me, this may take some weeks/months )

And why not make an "award" system ?

I don't think that we need an award or rarting system. All Tracks from FT are great, so why awarding/rating them?

Or what do the others think?

nope, we'll already have an awarding system on tmx. it's not necessary here imo

ok ok
and why not a "replay posting" ?