What Changed in June, July and August 2026

What changed in January to May 2026

Monday 1 June 2026

• Changes to try to reduce JS errors from pages not being fully loaded (Set_Section_Collapse and readCookie from pages)

→ Release 9.44.3.2

Wednesday 3 June 2026

• A catch for faulty boat size parameters added
• Added automatic error reporting to the background processor

→ Release 9.44.4

Thursday 4 June 2026

• A purge of old failed background jobs (over 50 days)

Friday 5 June 2026

• Partial fix to first buglet in issue 1390 - you return to the gazetteer top-level page, wherever you call from, but a lot better and probably all that is necessary.

Saturday 6 June 2026

• People tend to miss the ability to customise things, so:
• Changed "preferences" to "settings" which seems to be the widespread term for it these days
• And the icon to a cog from a wrench
• Moved it further up the menu to make it easier to find. It will mess with people's muscle memory for a while, but that doesn't seem to discourage Apple or Google or Samsung, so...
• Started on a "help us" plugin for places with the pub attribute set

Monday 8 June 2026

• Added a trap and catch mode for endless hacking attacks on the API
• Fixed bug in background processing to remove circle maps (detected by code in the previous release)

→ Release 9.44.5

• Added ability to reset the 'is a pub' attribute (but not to create it)

Tuesday 9 June 2026

• Fixed complicated bug where setting a newly created amenity to be the icon for a place did nothing
• Turned on the "Pub Attribute" help us plugin.

→ Release 9.44.6

Wednesday 10 June 2026

• Fixed a newly introduced bug where you couldn't add a new amenity if one was the symbol for the place

→ Release 9.44.6.1

• Added a trap to prevent pinchpoints being deleted

→ Release 9.44.6.2

Sunday 14 June 2026

• Proper test for whether the "edit distances" option is shown in the menu for waterways

Tuesday 16 June 2026

• Missing code added so that settings for amenity specific fields (for pubs and boatyards atm) are properly saved

→ Release 9.44.6.3

• Added display of specific fields to amenity popups. Configuration driven, so no need to change code if anything changes or is added

→ Release 9.44.7

Wednesday 17 June 2026

• Work on editing place details. Main aim is to force checking on the relative location of bridges and locks, but the code was a bit ancient so some tidying up was done at the same time. In all:
• Improved the lines between sections to reduce missing or duplicated ones
• Removed code to support winding hole/bridge pairs as that was no longer used
• Removed spare ?> from the end of the page (below the "spur" question)
• Added a blank first entry to the lock/bridge relation drop-down
• Added code to prevent submission if it's still blank and appropriate message

→ Release 9.44.8

Saturday 20 June 2026

• Fixed obscure bug in options that upset page distance and dimension options sometimes
• Pre-release fix of a bug in the new specific fields updating code

To Wednesday 15 July 2026

• Work on PDF output
• Refactoring of PDF code to better integrate itinerary PDFs and checklists.
• Started on new "one pass" itinerary PDF generation
• Working on ideas for a new "guide" format
• Added additional anti-hack to messages and callback. Yet more effort that could be spent on improving the site to protect against stupid wanking arseholes.

To Sunday 9 August 2026

• Lots more work on PDF
• New map generation serverside using headless Chrome
• Tidied up the code a lot and deleted several dead chunks
• Download and open links for PDF - will spread to other output later

→ Release 9.45 (beta only)

• Added a conditional mode for buttons and used to show experimental PDF only to very selected users.

→ Release 9.45

To Friday 21 August 2026

• Lots of work on the new maps for PDF, including some stonking investigation of how to run headless chrome (and later chromium) on virtual X buffers and so enable clear and reliable screenshots on different architectures.

• Turned off the conditional mode, so made experimental available to all

• Early development work on the new PDF mode but nothing fit to be seen in public yet

→ Release 9.45.0.1

Saturday 22 August 2026

• Added "open or download" block to CSV export to resolve issue 1401.
• Tidied up the PDF generation, removing dead code, rationalising what is in which file etc
• Removed unused logfiles and extended for future development
• Fixed code that should have put a quotation in the printed itinerary if turned on by options

Monday 24 August 2026

• Removed links to old PDF generation and made the new version the normal one

→ Release 9.45.1

Saturday 28 August 2026

• Improvements to stoppage information in routes:
• In the block of navigational notes, distinguished between "CRT information" and actual waterway stoppages. The latter get a warning icon.
• Likewise, links to navigational notes in the text now get a warning icon and message if the note is an actual stoppage
• Yet more bloody coding to stop bloody dickheads trying to do bloody SQL injection attempts. This time on the bloody flow control
• And more killer words in the API trap list as well. About 80% of the actual errors we get are this scumbags.

→ Release 9.45.2