2008-07-31 11:22:32
Mucked with linecompare.php and linecomparegamejp.php again. First when I shortened the URLs, I made the mistake of not checking for later entries in an array, so I switched it to an array-checking method a few days ago. However, it turns out that messed things up when it wasn't getting an array, like for the single-line images shown on the individual game pages. So now the first thing it does is go "Are you an array?" so it knows which check to make. Hopefully I didn't bungle them up in another unforeseen way.

2008-07-30 13:59:25
Replaced the entry page index.html with index.php. This allows me to make the page less static by including things such as... these change logs. It shouldn't take much more to make an archive of changes as well as an RSS feed, but this is as far as things go today.

2008-07-29 13:41:09
Bugfix. Problem with linecompare.php and others that shortened parameter names with multiple inputs, like linecomparegamejp.php. If it didn't find the new type, it's set to go to the old type for compatibility with earlier created URLs. The problem is the way it checked to see if the new type was there was to see if the first item was empty or not. Thanks to default values, though, it's quite possible that you'll normally want to make lines using the default "System" grouping and only put "HardwareFamily" for a later one. In the current method, it would see that the first is blank, check for the old method, and miss that you wanted "HardwareFamily" later on. It now uses a better check, and should only default to the old parameter if absolutely nothing is given for a certain new parameter.

Furthering the shortening of URLs after having made some long multi-year comparisons today, the values for grouping can be shortened as well. ShortName can be replaced with sn, HardwareFamily with hf, and Manufacturer with m. The creation page has this change in place.

It's kind of disappointing that URLs are becoming less readable, but I guess for as little as people probably took advantage of it it's not worth the much longer URLs. What once was &group[5]=HardwareFamily is now &gr[5]=hf .

2008-07-19 23:00:00
For years linecompare.php has left the ticks and labels of the X-axis on their default settings. Now it's modified so a large number of weeks or a small image width doesn't result in overlapping gibberish.

2008-07-18 23:00:00
Slightly modified the old piechartweekly.php and barchartweekly.php to use the more standard or shortened arguments others use. No more "date1" instead of "week", for instance. These having been given the brush-up, weekoverview.php now includes links to them for both trackers for each week.

Then turned weekoverview.php "Week of XXXX-XX-XX Overview" into weeklyoverview.php "Weekly Overview, Week of XXXX-XX-XX", because it just sounds better.

2008-07-11 23:00:00
Using as a base the code for the weekly Top 30 bar chart, I made this mid-2008 Top 100 chart. It uses the same scale, so the resulting image is pretty high resolution. Since the Garaph database doesn't include ranks beyond the weekly, I just stuck the necessary rank/units/platform data in as arrays.

2008-07-10 23:00:00
Created a new file, softwaregroupline.php. Previously, softwaregroup.php generated code to display a linecomparegamejp.php image at the bottom for a group, but I shunted that to this program. It needs a Group ID (grid), but the other options one would normally give to a software line (begin date, width, whatever) should still be passed along. This makes for much shorter URLs for group images. Easier to share, easier to post, easier to link to a few handy variations at the bottom of each group page. Default image shown has also changed to show as far out as a single game's sales go, rather than just a year (which is linked directly below).

Noticed the Line Weight (lweight) argument in linecomparegamejp.php wasn't working, and hadn't been for a long time. JpGraph's anti-alias option I have on by default automatically makes it use a width of 1. Now if it notices a non-1 width, it doesn't turn on anti-aliasing. Haven't fixed it in hardware's linecompare.php yet.

Also added in a step argument to linecomparegamejp.php. By default it's as it was, but if it's set to one the lines are displayed as steps rather than diagonals directly comparing bits of sales. This is technically how the site uses the sales data for other purposes; with a new batch of sales all seeming to come at once, rather than gradually at a perfectly constant rate between sales points.
Step
Not step

Elsewhere, barchartweeklytop30.php has been moved out of labs and put in the main directory. Just uses a week argument. No generator, but it will be made accessible through an obvious way soon enough.

Continuing the changes to linecomparegamejp.php, I made it not leave an empty line under the Game ID in the legend if there's no given abbreviation. When that was originally put in place I wasn't considering automatic displays for large game groups.

2008-07-09 23:00:00
Noticing that "new style" message-board-safe URLs can break when getting into something complicated enough that it all combines into an argument of 512 characters or more, I took some steps to shorten URLs. First, some of the longer and/or more frequently used argument names have been shortened. Abbreviation becomes abb, gameid gid, groupid grid, markinterval minterval, markwidth, mwidth, lineweight lweight.

Also, the "new style" makes things a bit shorter itself, and also more readable in plain text form, replacing brackets around numerals for arrays of data with a hyphen. abb[0] becomes abb-0 and so on.

All older-style URLs should still work unless more mistakes are yet undetected.