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Okay, I know it's been a long time since we did one of these but life does intrude on volunteer dev time. Hopefully this one will be worth the wait. Bear with me if I seem a bit off today, I'm writing this with a really fun head cold.
First, what didn't make it into this update but is directly upcoming. Bitpay is still down on account of them changing the API without notifying existing customers or versioning the new API and leaving the old one still up and functional. It's the first thing I'm going to work on after we get this update rolled out but it will basically require a complete rewrite. Don't expect it any earlier than two months from now because we like to test the complete hell out of any code that deals with your money.
Also, adding a Jobs nexus didn't quite make the cut because we're not entirely sure how/if we want to work it. One thing we are certain about, it would not be for headhunters or HR drones to spam us silly but for registered members who have a specific vacancy they need to fill and would like to throw it open to the community.
The API still has some broken bits but it's been low priority compared to what I've been busy with. I'm thinking I'll jump on it after Bitpay unless paulej72 cracks the whip and makes me fix bugs/implement features instead.
There were several other things that I had lined up for post-Bitpay but I can't remember them just now what with my head feeling like it's stuffed full of dirty gym socks.
Now let's throw the list of what did make it out there and go over it in more detail afterwards.
- Tweaked the themes a bit where they were off.
- Changed or fixed some adminy/editory stuff that most of you will never see or care about.
- Fixed a mess of minor bugs not worth noting individually.
- Improved Rehash installation. It should almost be possible to just follow directions and have a site working in an hour or two now.
- Added a very restrictive Content Security Policy.
- Added a link to the Hall of Fame. It was always there, just not linked to.
- Return to where you just moderated after moderating. (yay!)
- Return to where you just were after commenting. (yay some more!)
- Added a field for department on submissions. Editors get final say but if you have a good one, go for it.
- Added a Community Reviews nexus.
- Added a Politics nexus.
- Added <spoiler> tags for the Reviews nexus in case you want to talk about a novel without ruining it for everyone else. They function everywhere though.
- Changed really freaking long comments to have a scrollbar now instead of being click-to-show.
- Massively sped up comment rendering on heavily commented stories.
- Dimming of comments you've already read. (You can turn this off with the controls on the "Comments" tab of your preferences page if it annoys you.)
- Added a "*NEW*" badge to new comments in case you don't like dimming but still want to easily see new posts. (Disable it the same place as above.)
- Removed Nested, Threaded, and Improved threaded comment rendering modes (Necessary due to the changes required for the massive speed-up)
- Added Threaded-TOS and Threaded-TNG comment rendering modes. (TOS is the default)
- All comment modes now feature collapsible/expandable comments. (Without javascript)
Morning Update: Really digging the constructive criticism. Some quality thoughts in there. Keep them coming and we'll see how fast we can get a few done. --TMB
Before the specifics, I know some of you are going to see the new Threaded modes and be like "that's pretty awesome" and some of you are going to call us dev types very bad names. Well, this ain't the other site. We're not saying "You Shall Use This Because It's New And Shiny". We're saying something had to be done about page load times approaching a full minute on heavily trafficked stories and the way we pulled and rendered comments made up nearly all of that time.
So, the first thing we did was we stopped pulling every single comment and then removing the ones we didn't want to display. Mostly that means that the comment counts in the dropdown menus for Threshold and Breakthrough are on a per-page basis now.
Next we did away with templates for comments. Wildcarded, case insensitive search and replace, even in perl, is horribly slow and that's a large part of how templates worked. The html and related logic is now hardcoded into the source. This did mean though that we had to entirely rewrite all the comment modes logic. Flat and Threaded-TOS are pretty much identical to the old Flat and Threaded, so there shouldn't be any surprises there except that we got rid of the javascript in Improved Threaded and gave every mode collapsible comments with nothing but CSS. Threaded-TNG is new-ish however. It's essentially Nested but without Threshold or every top-level comment being fully visible. If Nested users absolutely cannot live with that, we'll preempt working on the bitcoin rewrite and slap a Nested mode in as well. It shouldn't take but a week, testing included.
Third, we paginated every mode. I know it was nice being able to see every comment on one page but that meant pulling and rendering every comment and that simply doesn't work if a story has over a hundred comments.
The removal of sorting by score we can't roll back though. Its loss was a necessity due to the way we pull and sort only the comments that the user actually requests. Previously, we were pulling every single comment for a story and then removing the ones we didn't want. That was both bloody stupid and slow as hell, so it had to go. Unfortunately it means we have to do things slightly differently. It may make a triumphant return eventually but it would require some moderately tricky coding with the particular way our code is laid out.
Oh and if you have objections to the new Threaded modes, by all means bitch about specifics in comments here and we'll see what we can do to address them. After having spent so much time recently bashing on exactly these bits of code, we're quite familiar with them and changes/additions shouldn't take too terribly long to whip out.
Now to the specifics.
The buttons on the upper left of each comment don't work exactly like the Javascript version did but we do like how they work. The double chevron either shows or hides the comment tree beneath a comment but it does not change their collapsed/expanded state. The single chevron controls the expanded/collapsed state of each comment individually. Adding another button to expand/collapse every individual comment beneath a given comment may be doable but we haven't figured out how so far. It is high on the wish list but not high enough to delay the release any longer than it already has been.
Flat: Flat is still flat but now with a collapse/expand button that functions like the ones from Improved Threaded.
Threaded-TOS: If you can find significant differences between Improved Threaded and Threaded-TOS, let us know because it's probably a bug. The idea was to make it as much like Improved Threaded as technically possible with just CSS but paginated like Nested so we don't have to render more than 100 comments at a go. We defaulted everyone on Nested/Threaded/Improved threaded to Threaded-TOS to minimize the aggravation of unexpected change. Oh, and Breakthrough now takes precedence over Threshold, so high scoring comments will always be visible even if they're responding to blatant trolling.
Threaded-TNG: All comment trees start fully branched out but with the individual comments either expanded or collapsed. "Comment Below Threshold" functionality is gone. Breakthrough gets compared to a comment's score to decide if it gets expanded or collapsed. Play with it a couple minutes; it's not terribly hard to grok. Why do we need this mode if TOS covers most all of the best bits of the three old modes? Because I like it. You don't have to use it. Shut up.
What happened to Nested? What's old is new again. Threaded-TNG more or less is Nested but with the fun bits of Improved Threaded bolted on as well and without the annoyance of having to allow Javascript to run. Minus Threshold functionality. If you spot any serious differences between the two besides those, give us a heads up, because we didn't. It's a very easy mode to code on though, so if you absolutely cannot live without Threshold it's not at all difficult to clone it, add Threshold back in, and call it Nested.
Why not leave the old comment rendering modes in as well as the new ones? Because by rewriting them we got a rendering speed increase around a factor of two+, to go with the factor of two+ increase we got by pulling only the necessary comments instead of every last comment a story has with every page load. This has been becoming necessary as we increasingly go way above the 100 comment mark on busy stories. It's not cool for you lot to have to wait forty-five seconds to load a page of comments and it's even less cool to peg a cpu core for forty-five seconds to deliver it to you. If you ever again find a story that takes 10+s to load, something's going wrong and we'd appreciate a heads up. We think there's still some room in the code for improvement but this was the lowest-hanging fruit.
Now on to the rest of the details.
The Content Security Policy should cover what's required for operation of this site (plus allowing for Stripe payments) and nothing else. If your browser honors CSPs, it should not be possible to get smacked with XSS or inline script injection on this site any more; even if we write code buggy enough to allow it, which we have once or twice.
On dimmed comments... This only functions for logged in users currently as it would take some serious work to get it functioning for individual ACs, even using cookies. What it does is when you load a page of comments, it picks the highest comment ID from that story and marks that comment as read by you. Switching between pages of comments or changing your Threshold/sort order should not update which comments you have read, even if new ones have come in since your last read comment ID was set. Hitting the "Mark All as Read" button or hitting your browser's Refresh button on the main story page should take the stored comment ID and set the opacity to 60% on all the comments with a comment ID equal to or less than that. It's not entirely accurate but it's pretty damned close and it doesn't bloat the db much at all. Oh and read histories get wiped after two weeks of not being updated for a particular user/story combination to save on db space as well.
The new comment badge functions exactly opposite of dimmed comments. It puts "* NEW *" in the title bar of comments you haven't read yet. It's there strictly so you can have the same functionality but dislike the aesthetics of comment dimming. You can technically use both if you really want new comments to stand out but that would just be weird.
Returning to where you last moderated works like this. If you moderate one comment, you'll get sent back to that comment. If you moderate several in one go, you should get sent to the one farthest down the page. Moderating does not update the comment ID of what you've read for dimming purposes.
Returning to where you just made a comment? That's pretty self-explanatory. It also should not update the comment ID of what you've read for dimming purposes.
The Politics nexus. This does not mean we're looking to have even more political stories. The balance of tech/science/etc... to political stories is not going to change nor will the quality of accepted political submissions. It's primarily a way to let people who are sick and bloody tired of seeing politics here set a preference and never see political stories again. It's also handy if you wish to see what political stories we've run recently as clicking on the nexus link on the left of the page will show you only those stories.
The Reviews nexus has been brought up three separate times that I can remember by different groups of people, so we decided to go ahead with it. It's going to be a book/film/software/hardware/etc... review and discussion place. By my understanding, though I'm not really involved, it's getting its own space because some folks wanted to start what amounts to a site book club. Tech books will of course be welcome but it's open to all genres of printed and bound words. Ditto non-book reviews. Just don't go sending in a review of something we normally wouldn't publish news about on the site. Not enough people are going to be interested in your review of the barber shop down the street from your house, so it won't get published.
Spoiler tags, <spoiler>text you don't want casually seen</spoiler>, work both in stories and comments and are just a bit of css trickery that hide the text between them until the person viewing them hovers over the *SPOILER* text. There's a slight delay, so don't think it's not working because it's not immediate. That's intentional so you don't accidentally trigger showing the contained text by briefly crossing it.
By popular demand, <del> tags were also added.
That's all worth mentioning in this site update. Look for another one hopefully in May or late April. If you find any bugs, please slap them up as issues on our github repo or email them to dev@soylentnews.org.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RedBear on Sunday February 26 2017, @01:07PM (19 children)
One of the reasons I moved from that other site was because they kept "improving" things that didn't need improving. I thought that I wasn't alone in that, damnit. I don't like what's going on here. I'm afraid this will fall on deaf ears, but this is one of like two sites that I visit on a daily basis, so as a subscriber I feel I have to speak my mind or risk seeing all this become permanent.
I'm not a fan of the way the username has been moved into a mess in the middle of the red bar instead of at the beginning of the gray bar. Because subjects are variable length, now I have to hunt for the username. All text in the red bar is white, so it's a pain to visually extract the username even though it's still a link. It's all white, bold text, so it just gives the impression of a really long, ugly subject line. Plus the stars and face emojis are all in the red bar now. I'm struggling to understand how this layout makes sense to someone. Whoever did this must see things much differently than I do. You've turned a beautiful, clean interface that I found delightfully easy to understand and navigate into visual confusion.
I am not a fan of the chevrons at all. To me, they are ugly and confusing. Trying to put rounded corners on a small black and white square icon just ends up looking icky. Not sure why they can't remain nice plus/minus/plusplus icons with precise square borders even if the function changes.
I really do appreciate all the work you guys are doing behind the scenes to fix bugs and security issues and modernize the code, but I have to be honest; I hate this. I hate this very much. And I just reloaded the page and now all the colors are washed out. Text boxes with gray backgrounds instead of white? The red looks like tomato soup now. The lack of contrast between background and text makes my eyes hurt. Everything keeps changing.
What in the actual f**k? Why do you have to ruin this site for me? Am I totally alone in wanting the site to stay nice and simple and look the way it's always looked? Oh god it's going to be so much fun trying to scroll through a page full of long posts and have the cursor get captured by each post that has its own scroll bar. Loads of fun, especially on a phone. Spoiler tags that auto-open and shift the whole page around as I'm moving my cursor around. Just what I've always wanted!
I'm just about done here. If you wanted to drive me crazy in one night, you found a good way to do it.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday February 26 2017, @01:21PM (6 children)
You can get rid of the washed out colour thing with a single click in your preferences (the summary explicitly says so).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Sunday February 26 2017, @01:52PM (5 children)
Thanks for that, and it's nice that it's an option, but most people will never look through the preferences enough to find that. And what about lurkers and those who aren't logged in? If that faded crap is the default they'll have to see that whenever they come here. Why can't it be opt-in instead of opt-out? Bottom line is it makes the site look horrible and the lack of contrast between text and background causes eye fatigue. The only worse option would be white text on a black background.
I also forgot to mention that I hate how the score is now jumbled up in the mess of text in the red bar along with the username and everything else, instead of being at the end of the line. Now there are four different kinds of elements that I have to visually parse out of a single line.
I hate this with a burning passion. This site and its predecessor (before it was ruined) have always been among the cleanest, easiest to read Internet forums I've ever been on, and now half of that has been destroyed for me. Maybe I'm the only one who sees it this way, and no one else cares. It certainly seems so.
I am going to be very depressed if this is the way things are going to be from now on. As a user, I don't recall asking for any of these massive visual changes to suddenly occur.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 26 2017, @02:02PM (4 children)
It's not. It would in fact be a whole lot more work to make that even possible.
It could, and it may very well be in the future. We wanted opinions on it though and since probably half the community won't even read this post, it needed to be opt-out at the beginning at least.
That's a fair beef. I even agree. I'll discuss that with paulej72 as soon as he pulls his head out of fixing whatever he's currently fixing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Sunday February 26 2017, @03:31PM (3 children)
That's fair. Opt-out just to test it. Unfortunately I seem to be the only one complaining about it so far. Makes me deeply worried it'll get stuck that way.
Here's the deal. The old way wasn't just visually easier to parse, it was mentally easier to parse, because there was a logical separation of elements related to each other, a simple subject line beautifully visually separated from everything else, and a logical manipulation of important vs. trivial details when expanding and collapsing posts.
Red bar:
Subject text (Score: 999)
[ Two important elements, makes it easy to pick through long collapsed threads for gems that might be interesting. ]
Gray bar:
by SomeDumbassNoob (1234) on The Last Day of the Rest of Your Life, @ZERODARKTHIRTYFM (#9999999999999) [[relevant star/face icons]]
[ All elements related to who/what/where/why/when Re:This post and its author ]
All of the unnecessary details disappeared when collapsed. It was Right[TM]. It was Good[TM]. Stop NotDoingThat[TM]. I don't need to see the star and friend/foe icons still hovering next to collapsed posts. Put them back in the gray bar where they can stop shining like beacons out of the dark night of the red bar. They work so much better on the gray. Fix the expand/collapse icons to something precise and classy (hint: hold shift key to draw a perfect square with the rectangle tool*) and make the fade stuff opt-in (and for the love of eyeball health, tone down the color difference drastically between new vs. faded, even think about making new somehow brighter rather than fading anything), and my sanity may yet be restored. In fact, if the faded thing was really done right, with subtlety and aesthetics in mind, I'd probably even turn it back on and maybe even argue to make it permanently opt-out. But it would have to be beautiful and totally lacking in obnoxiousness. And tomato soup.
I may or may not be misremembering exactly what info was still visible when a post was collapsed. Seems like the username remained visible, and I think it should be. I don't know how technically difficult this is to do with the new code if the username is moved back to the gray bar, but I'm sure a way can be found.
Unfortunately I really have to get some sleep so this is really all I can participate in this thread for now.
* Shift key also makes the line tool draw only orthogonal (horiz/vert) lines. Sometimes 45deg angles too, depends on the software.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 3, Insightful) by paulej72 on Sunday February 26 2017, @04:07PM (2 children)
Revered to the previous form for the byline. also fixed some other bugs.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 26 2017, @10:59PM (1 child)
That solves my only big gripe.
The entire Subject line now being all bold (headline tag, actually) relative to how that looked last week was a bit jarring for me.
I'm getting used to it.
Depending on the length of the Subject, that line can now wrap to a 2nd line which adds to vertical spacing of the page.
That's my remaining bugaboo. Small potatoes.
My preferred presentation is HTML-only (so, black text on a white background and no sidebars) with images blocked (except the subscriber star) and scripts blocked.
My old bookmarks are in the form
https://soylentnews.org/meta/article.pl?sid=17/02/12/1618241&threshold=-1&highlightthresh=-1#topcomment [soylentnews.org]
and those are working as before (with the new default threading).
The Degrades Gracefully thing is still working well for me with the new changes.
Big props from me there.
I will still grouse about the way that long text strings with no spaces (folks including monstrous URLs) are folded via CSS (which I don't download) instead of in HTML (as it was done way back at the start of the site).
Small potatoes there as well.
I also still think that honoring the quote pseudotag via CSS was the wrong way to go, but I figure I'm in a tiny minority.
The way you guys are making it work for so many use cases is impressive and very much in keeping with the spirit of the site as I see it.
Again, big props from me to our devs.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 27 2017, @12:33PM
Yeah, we really should s/quote/blockquote/ it to be more compliant. Low priority at the moment though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 26 2017, @01:46PM (11 children)
Rest assured none of the above was done "just because it's new". Most all of it was done because our top commented story in the hall of fame was taking up to fifty seconds to load. Using curl. Locally on the web frontend.
The CSS collapsible comments was done so that all modes could have them as well as people who use script blockers. I've got no beef with making them +/- instead of chevrons, I'm just personally incapable of making the images. I can't so much as draw a circle. Yes, I know there is a circle tool in gimp. That should tell you how bad I suck at art. Dude above dropped some CSS to do it without images though and I think I'll test that out on dev here when paulej72 is done with his morning coding.
Now you've got beefs with the aesthetics, that's fair. Hell, I've got beefs with the aesthetics. That kind of thing happens when you have no art folks on staff. Like I said up above though, this ain't the other site. You bitch about something here, we hear you and address it. paulej72 was already coding up fixes that need no debate when you typed this and we're debating the stuff that does need some.
Speak your mind. Chew our asses. Just be specific and we'll see what we can do.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Sunday February 26 2017, @02:25PM (9 children)
I really appreciate everything you just said. And the thing that I dislike the most is even feeling like I need to "chew somebody's ass" at all. I know you guys are always doing miraculous and magnificent things in the background with no recompense besides a job well done. I totally understand and approve of taking measures to fix major performance bottlenecks. But these visual changes have taken a site that, out of hundreds of horribly designed forums I've encountered, has always been easy for my eyes and my foggy brain to parse through with little effort on a daily basis, and just metaphorically whacked it in the face with an ugly-stick. Especially that faded stuff. Egad. If I want tomato soup I have some in the pantry. I don't need it splashed all over my favorite website.
If the star icon were just given a darker border similar to the face icons it would be perfect going back and hanging out in the gray bar. That was literally the ONLY change I ever wanted to make to the old format, a better border around the star so I could more easily parse how many subscribers were participating in a conversation. Without a dark border the star tended to get lost in the light gray. But it wasn't a big deal at all, and everything else with the old layout WAS FINE.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 26 2017, @03:11PM (8 children)
Yeah, I get that. Unfortunately sometimes we get to a point where we really need feedback we just can't get without pushing code live.
paulej72's almost done with having the "by RedBear(1734)*star**zoo-icon(s)*" only show up in the title bar when a comment is collapsed and having it always show up in the details bar. That's the title bar showing when a comment is collapsed btw, just unstyled. When he's done, I'll be checking out dude above's +/- buttons CSS and possibly adding an "expand all beneath this comment" button if it's as simple as I think it might be.
We'll likely roll whatever we get done this morning out this afternoon or evening.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Sunday February 26 2017, @03:42PM
Sounds like you're describing it working the way I described in my other longer reply above, the way I remember it working. I have confidence that it can be done, while retaining all the performance and compatibility benefits this was intended to bring about. I look forward to seeing things make sense again when I wake up. Good night and godspeed.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Sunday February 26 2017, @04:17PM (6 children)
I can't even keep up with the changes. Things are looking much better already. But at the moment the star/face icons are still hovering next to the collapsed posts. I don't know about everyone else, but personally I find this neither useful nor aesthetic. I just see a page full of way too many bright yellow icons interspersed with text. I hope that when I return those too will be hidden and the collapsed text will be solely:
Subject goes here (Score: 6) by ThatDirtyNoGoodSoAndSo
I notice that (at the moment) the collapsed posts are entirely in bold text like the text in an expanded red bar. I feel like this is not how it used to be and makes it look like the page is polluted with header text that pulls the eye away from the non-bolded text content of the expanded posts. I shouldn't have to fight to keep my attention on the actual content of each post.
I also feel that collapsed posts used to be somewhat better connected visually with their parent posts. This clear connection between child and parent posts is one of the things I always liked about the old style layout (and Slashdot). Unfortunately without a screenshot of the older layout I can't be more precise about what seems to be different. Like, there used to be actual lines connecting the parent post with each layer of descendants? Something like that. Something's just missing. It's not horrible, but it doesn't look right.
I am turning the "Dim older comments" thing back on and hoping it will either disappear or look 1000% better when I wake up. I think it's a faulty concept. Find a way to make newer comments look shinier/darker/bigger or something of that nature, rather than fading old comments into oblivion. Think subtle. Just like with makeup, a little can go a very long way.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 26 2017, @04:37PM
I think you're going to want the highlight new comments mode for that with dimming disabled. Different people are going to prefer different methods which is why we put both in. We just weren't sure how cosmetically to highlight a new post. We'll probably end up having to write a new style in for each theme, which is slightly time consuming but not a big deal.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Sunday February 26 2017, @07:14PM (4 children)
Opacity was changed for dimmed comments. Made them more opaque, but tried to leave enough contrast to see the difference. I hope this helps.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 3, Informative) by kazzie on Sunday February 26 2017, @08:05PM
One voice here saying yes, it helps. Until reading this comment, I thought it was my phone's browser rendering it too translucent. (I browsed on my phone this morning, not on my laptop this evening.
And the highlighting of new posts is really helpful: it will make me more likely to re-visit recent articles and potentially drum up some conversation. I'm still using both the opacity and *NEW* flags for the time being, but can't readily see me changing from the current default.
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Monday February 27 2017, @05:56AM (2 children)
Now I see how you're doing the dimming, and why I had such an extreme reaction to the original setting. It still looks bad even toned down. Here's the problem: When you change the opacity of the entire element, you are also changing the opacity of the text. This exacerbates the "low contrast" feeling even with a very minor change in opacity.
If there were a way to, say, change only the opacity of the red bar, or make a very minor change in the size of the font in the header of newer comments, while keeping the opacity of the primary text, the overall effect would be far less jarring. Better than changing anything's opacity would be to just make the color of the red bar slightly brighter. Not grayer. An art teacher would probably say, "Add white, not gray or black".
There has been a bug in Mac OS X for many years that sometimes causes the color profile of a calibrated display to revert to a default profile, which tends to make the screen suddenly look "washed out". Some hardware faults like faulty display cables can mimic this. It's unpleasant to see this when you're used to seeing crisp, vibrant colors on your screen. By choosing to fade older comments rather than highlighting newer comments, you end up making typically at least 90% of a page look "faded" and it makes me feel like there is something wrong with my display. It's like driving a car through a thick fog bank or trying to read a newspaper through dusty goggles. I just don't believe it's the right way to do what you're trying to do.
Before someone corrects me again, I know the dimming can be disabled and I know the new comments are also highlighted with [ *NEW* ].
Thanks for fixing what you've fixed so far. I note several remaining issues (and some weird actual bugs) in this reply to cmn32480:
https://soylentnews.org/meta/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=17968&mode=threadtos&cid=472100#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 27 2017, @12:30PM
That's actually not a bad idea. I may monkey with that today. Any changes to the highlight new posts functionality to say brighten the new title bar colors will need to be theme-specific though, which means 8x the work or so.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Monday February 27 2017, @02:10PM
The dimming of comments was something the green site did, and us devs thought it was a good way to show posts you already read. As you should have read them, having them dimmed gets them out of the way somewhat visually.
What we did not do is set the dimming on a per theme basis, so we may need to look at how it does on individual themes. Also if you have your monitor setup with lower contrast to begin with, it may be very hard to read. Right now I am using Night Mode and the dimming is noticeable but not detrimental.
It is very hard to make things look different easily to allow users to pick out what it different. I would rather not say highlight old or new comments by radically changing the title bar color, but if we can get away with a subtle change that is noticeable we will try.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 3, Insightful) by darnkitten on Monday February 27 2017, @03:48AM
't's OK--speaking as what passes for an artist, myself, I'd rather see functionality emphasized over aesthetics . I've seen too many projects ruined by artists trying for some gawdawful affect (yes, that was a pun, and I apologize). Aesthetics are subjective, and need to change with all deliberative slowness.
And many "tips of the hat" to y'all for the speed and tact with which you've responded to criticisms, as well as your responsiveness in fixing issues. I was unable to log in earlier (otherwise occupied), and it looks like many of the problems alluded to up-thread were solved before I even saw them.
We appreciate all of your hard work--it is one of the many reasons we green-site expats have found a metaphorical home here.