Guys, I just uploaded the latest and long awaited new version of the Seatmap Component (com_mls_seatmap).

I think the bigges improvement is the new "Edit Map" interface! As you will see, all changes you do, are directly sent to the database via an AJAX request which makes editing your map much easier and much more fun! This directly affects performance (no more time-outs) and also useability when it comes to assigning IP-Addresses and Names. Whereas earlier, the whole page had to be reloaded when you assigned IP-Addresses (or Names), this is now all done via AJAX as well.

Another big new feature is the ability to copy a room. This has been requested by a few people as well. So you only need to design your room once, and just copy it into the next event and it can immediately be re-used there. 

IMPORTANT: I consider this version still beta (or even alpha). Although I tested it multiple times, I cannot ensure that you will not find one or the other bug or security whole. So anybody using this version, it is absolutely crucial that you provide me with lots of feedback, whether positiver or negative! Use the forums, bugtracker, email.. whatever you like, but please, please, please talk to me, right?

Feedback needed:
And I need your feedback on another thing. As you know, the seatmap consists of loads of tiny little images which are all loaded individually. This makes the interface in the frontend rather slow as it needs to load several hundred images for each room. Now, I already tested a new way of doing this and it works absolutely great. I have a function, which automatically creates one big PNG image for the room by just copying all the elements into one image and saving it on the disk. I then just put an imagemap on top of it for the mouse-over menues and the links. This makes the page loading much, much faster and also dropt the overall size of the map (saving you bandwith-cost). Obviously a downside is, that users will not immediately see their change once they reserved a seat as the image will only be re-created every X minutes (you will be able to define X).
So, what I need to know from you is, whether or not you like this feature. Or if you like it, but as an option (so people can choose between old-style and new-style seatmap). So please send me an email with your thoughts!

Links:
Changelog
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