[admin (no pm's please)]

A fix to smilies being lost when a post is previewed has been installed.

This was a regression caused by a published hack to open links in a new window.

Investigating this bug lead me to review some of the current phpbb3 code line. e.g. the code that will be released as an update to pnpbb3.

What I found scared me   Each file I looked at contained not just extensive bug fixes, but also there were significant structural changes.

With good/settled code you have a series of "blackbox" modules. You do not need to care what is in the box, it takes certain input and comes back with certain results. As such each module can be upgraded independently.

The phpbb3 updates break this model, there has been a lot of chopping and changing in what calls what where. Now whilst these changes may ultimately be good ones, the net result is that in my estimation the difference between the base version of phpbb3 and the updated version is far greater than the "inline" code changes we have made to phpbb3.

This makes be all the more sure that the best way forward for ourselves and our members is to play a waiting game with phpbb3, fixing what needs to be fixed, but not making matter worse with inline code changes.

Note that much of what myff has added to phpbb3 is by way of portals and web pages, code that is designed not to be "inline" code. The exception to this in portal terms is the ACTIONS model that we recently added to phpBB2, as such that will not be being added to phpBB3 in the near future.

I'd like to remind people that the myff phpBB2 continues to be by far the most advanced phpBB2 forum feature wise, and that it got there by having features added in a structured fashion only at the point where I was confident the method of adding the feature was sound. This might of seemed like a lot of "Nay" saying to some members, but the end result was worth it.