Eric

I will be adding one more theme to the mix, maybe you'll like that one better. I'll send you a private message when it's available to view (maybe today)

Of course! And thanks for the suggestion. I much prefer having the single link to My ATX over having the three specific links to the KB, Efile Doodad, and Downloads. Also, I've scrapped the subscription idea, as it just got needlessly complicated. I'll have a new Donate button up, but not before I finish the Google Search option.

A link on your desktop that opens this website? There are a number of ways to do that. The easiest is go to the ATX Community home page, and click/drag the icon next to the website address to your desktop. Another option is to right click your desktop, click New, then choose Shortcut. When asked for the location, type www.atxcommunity.com When asked for a name, type ATX Community

I've got a list I'm working through, and the Donate button is somewhere near the end. I may end up introducing a voluntary subscription feature for something like $5/yr. Bigger text everywhere (almost finished) and a new search option come first.

The major parts of the updates are complete now. I'll be working on tweaks here and there today, like making the font sizes larger. There were changes in the software that affect time zone calculation and DST settings, so you may have to go back and edit your settings relating to those things. To check if the forum time matches your time, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and look for the time in the right-hand corner. You can get to your settings by going to the top-right and clicking that drop-down box. Everything has been reorganized and is hopefully easier to find. There are lots of changes, so shout if you have any questions!

Ok, seriously folks. Almost done.

Still working on the updates. The downtime may not occur until tomorrow (Monday) evening.

Howdy folks, sorry about the short notice, but I'm going to be working on upgrading the forum today, so there will be a little bit of downtime. You're going to see some changes, some more noticeable than others. 1. New look and feel. Blue and green theme. Bigger text in all areas by default. Should be easier on the eyes. 2. Improved navigation for controls for your settings and profile info. Hopefully the new layout is more logical and doesn't take long for anyone to get used to. 3. Searching. While the default search will be the same as the old one, I'm going to add a new option that will use Google to search the forum. This option will allow you to use smaller search terms.. for example you'll be able to search commonly abbreviated tax terms that are not searchable with the built-in forum search. This will become available after the initial upgrade. 4. May remove the ATX links from the top of the forum if they're not being used. I'll start a poll to see how many people use them regularly. There are many more changes/new features than what's on this short list, but I think that covers the most common suggestions I have received so far. Again, I'm sorry for the short notice, but the site shouldn't be down for too long. I just wanted to get this done soon so that everyone has time to get comfortable before tax season hits.

If ATX runs in Vista, it should run in Windows 7. XP Mode in 7 sounds like an ugly solution for running old software that wont run any other way. If your computer wont run Windows 7's virtualization, you could try out VirtualBox, which is a free (and pretty high quality) VM solution. I've used it in Linux to run Windows, and I know their Windows version runs on Windows 7. http://www.virtualbox.org/

Hey Lion, I recently found out that Kyle no longer works for VMS, so I'm not sure how actively they're watching the forum.

That's a good question. I just checked the calendar, and it says they're 2009 years old. I can't explain it, and I've never seen that happen before. I'll add that to my list of things to look at when I'm doing the upgrades.

If I didn't depend so heavily on a few web development firefox extensions, I might use Chrome as my main browser. If you regularly use something besides IE and don't have problems, then you probably wont have any issues using Chrome. It's just those few websites that require Internet Explorer that'll still give you a headache. I like the minimal interface quite a bit. I suggest installing it to see how you like it, it's quite easy to install and uninstall. Randall is talking about the recent news that Google is working on a new operating system called Chrome OS. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/int...-chrome-os.html

The 4 character minimum on searches is a limitation of the mySQL database engine. It drives me crazy too on other forums. It is possible to lower the limit, but it's uncommon, and from what I understand can cause the search to tax the server. I will look into improving the search though, I know there are ways around this. (note to self, look into sphinx search integration) I'll do my best to make settings easier to find. Give me a shout after the upgrade if you're still having trouble, and maybe an explanation on my part will make things more clear. Spell check available now. Firefox has it's own spell check, and will automatically underline misspelled words in Red. Internet Explorer users will see a spell check button on the editor.

I'm sure it's cooler here, but boy it's muggy right now. It's been raining all week and the mosquitos at my house are almost as big as humming birds. Prepare to donate blood.

No need for funds, but thanks for asking Sometimes it's best not to shake a keyboard upside down. You may get more than you bargained for. I know that some people really don't like change, I just don't want to upset anyone. As for website tinkering, it's what I do 9-5 and then some. That depends, will you clean mine? I'm sure I'll get the better end of this deal.

I could create a new forum called "Article Archive" below E-File where links to articles can be posted. It'll have to be done manually.. so if someone sees an article they think should be saved in the archive, anyone could go post it there. I'll turn off the feature for that forum that hides inactive threads after 30 days so that people will be able to locate old articles in there without having to search. If that sounds like a reasonable solution, I'll implement it when I do the rest of the forum upgrades. If you have other ideas, I'm all ears.

I'm going to be performing some upgrades to the forum within the next week or so, and I'll update this thread before the site goes down temporarily (most likely for less than a couple hours) for maintenance. Would you mind seeing a new, more colorful design, Would you prefer to leave things the way they are? Indifferent? Once the upgrade is complete, I'll be working on adding adjustable font sizes, and some other features. If you have any suggestions, please post them here, or in the Website Discussion forum.

It took me about 6 seconds. Thank you, internet. Sure, it's not as impressive as actually figuring it out, but hey, I work with the tools that are available to me. :D

Could you give me a link to the post so I can see it? Sorry about taking so long to respond, we've had a pretty rough last couple of weeks.

Forest Gump was smarter than the majority of the people who hold public office in this country.

There's nothing to debate. It is a spending problem. The only thing to debate is whether or not the republican party would be doing any different. Recent history gives us no reason to think so. Yes, the Bush administration gave us 3 major tax cuts, but not without huge increases in federal spending. If you've got a half an hour to spare, here's a video called I.O.U.S.A. (the 30 minute condensed version) that talks about the history of the national debt in the US, and deficit spending. It was made before Obama took office, however, so it looks like there is no shortage of material for a sequel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_TjBNjc9Bo Oh, and I got an e-mail from Despair Inc the other day about a new t-shirt they're selling. "I helped spend billions to bail out a failing auto-maker, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" http://site.despair.com/governmentmotors/

I have Safari installed, but I prefer Google Ghrome. Chrome uses Safari's rendering engine, so websites should function exactly the same way in both browsers. I believe Chome's got the best javascript performance of any browser, making javascript-heavy web applications much snappier to use. Firefox just has so many extensions available that I can't imagine them missing from my browser. ... Oh yeah, and IE6 is a heap of crap.

I installed it even though I don't use IE. It's got somewhat better standards support than IE7 does, and as a web developer, that's all I care about. I may not use it, but the more IE users with the latest version of IE, the happier I am. Internet Explorer 6 is such a heap of crap, I wish it would just go away. Of course, I would prefer that everyone ditch IE for Firefox or Chrome, or Opera, or Safari... but it wont happen. Many companies build websites that require IE (although fewer and fewer all the time)

The BIOS: it depends. Sometimes you can just plug in a new video card, and the computer will recognize that and disable the on-board video automatically. Sometimes, however, you have to go into the BIOS and disable the on-board manually. My suggestion is to ignore the BIOS and see if you get a picture on the monitor plugged into the new card when you boot up. If not, plug the monitor back into the on-board, reboot, enter BIOS, disable on-board video, save settings and leave the BIOS, and then try the new card again. Don't worry if you don't get a picture right away. You can always remove the video card and go back to on-board to keep tinkering. As far as drivers and Vista goes, you're probably right about Plug-and-Play, but it's a good idea to go online and download the newest video drivers from the card manufacturer (ATI or nVidia).

It's likely that you'll have more than one type of slot. Go with PCI Express 16x if you can. If it's in there, it's always the one on top. Here's a picture of an actual motherboard. The top one is PCIe 16x, the next two are PCIe 1x, and the other three are just plain PCI. No idea why the last one is red, probably just for looks.