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I'm pleased to announce that we've released the next major version of slashcode, and upgraded the production systems as of today. Since yours truly forgot that May has 31 days, you're also getting it a day early. Here's the short list of what's in this update.
Slashcode 14.06 Changelog
Hate the red? Not a problem, go choose "chillax", and enjoy a nice refreshing blue look and feel for the site. Right now, we're only using it for CSS changes, but each theme can override the default theme in an inherited matter. At some point, we are seriously going to look at giving SN a facelift and moving away from the stock slashcode red. Now, with any change, there are those who will dislike it for one reason or another, but with a simple click in their preferences, they can simply go back to how the site was before.
Improved Threading (D1.5)
Perhaps our most user visible change with this release, this brings the discussion system out of 1997, and something closer to mid-2000s. For anyone who's ever used the old "Slashdot/SoylentNews Expandable Comment Tree", this is going to look familiar. I took the GPLv2-licensed GreaseMonkey script, modified it into a server-side script, then Paul went and made it work with CSS instead of page-scraping. The upshot?
A *massive* improvement to site usability, and threading, preventing you having to have millions of tabs open to follow any discussion. Now, obviously, there is still some room for improvement, such as an inline "Reply" box, but this should go a long way in helping in browsing comments. Due to the way its implemented, non-JS users will gracefully degrade to the "Threaded" view, and for those who simply hate it, feel free to flip your user preference from "Improved Threaded" to "Threaded" or "Nested.
Improved Threading is now the default for ACs, and if your preferences were set to Threaded or Nested, you were automatically upgraded. This feature, as with all features, will continue to keep evolve. If you're interested in improving it, and are good with JavaScript or CSS, come find us on IRC, and make yourselves known, or write a nifty GreaseMonkey script, and we'll migrate it into a server-side one.
NOTE: There was a slight goof which is causing Improved Threading to not quite work the way most people expect it to, its more "Improved Nested" at the moment. We're discussing on IRC about this right now, but as a workaround, set your browsing score to 4 which will make it work similar to the way its supposed to work).
Dead Code Removal/Site Optimizations
Inspired by the LibreSSL efforts to strip down and clarify OpenSSL, I've started undertaking a similar project through the codebase. As of now, approximately, 50k lines of code and other garbage have been jettisoned from the codebase, including most of the bloated and unused Javascript. As a practical upshot of this, our average page load size is now 3/5ths smaller than what it was in the previous release. There's still a fair bit of cruft in the codebase in the form of unused functions, dead code paths, and other junk, but I'm optimistic that by time we're done, we can skim another 10-15k lines of code out of the codebase, making it easier to audit and bugfix.
The following bits of code were completely removed:
I do hope you enjoy this round of fixes and improvements. That being said, I am sorry that some promised work didn't make it into this release, most importantly, moderation and metamoderation reworks. With luck, I'll find time between now and the next release to really start hammering on it, and then look at releasing it to production in the form of a point release. As always, post below, and know that your comments are helping decide the future of this site.
Until next time, NCommander
Slashcode 14.06 Changelog
- New user-selectable themes, including a Night Mode. Themes are now CSS based and use no images for effects.
- New collapsible comment with the Improved Threaded mode. (Has set as default for all users that have Threaded or Nested set. You can change it back if you dislike it.)
- New message display that shows all messages in reverse chronological order as a full message (now without the email footer). Also set the Daily Newsletter to be off for new users.
- Removed a bunch of unneeded code that will make page loading faster.
- Static pages (FAQ and About) are now dynamic and show the proper user menu and theme.
- RSS now encoded properly.
- Preferences update to make pages work together better. (Most of the work was on the admin side so most of you will never see the bulk of the changes.) Also fixed a issue with the Homepage Prefs where the reset to default would not set everything to the defaults.
- Updates to the Submissions system. The pages look better and now your past submissions are organized better.
- Login system updated to allow passwords with unlimited lengths and user names of upto 35 characters.
- Slashboxes fixed so that they show properly when you change your Homepage settings.
- Pollbooth updates to make pages look better.
- Fixed issue with long words and page elements overflowing their parent divs by adding word-wrap: break-word; to the css.
- Smoke-test of subscriber code; expect to see a few users with stars running around as we get the bugs out
- And a bunch of smaller fixes that you will be sure to notice.
A huge round of applause to paulej72 for going through the bug list and sorting out much of what was there. Furthermore, I'd also like to extend thanks to iWantToKeepAnon and TheMightyBuzzard for contributions to this release.
As always, feel free to submit your issues to our bugtracker where our crack team of flying monkeys will labor to try and make it part of future site upgrades.
Check past the break for more thoughts and comments on these changes.
Hate the red? Not a problem, go choose "chillax", and enjoy a nice refreshing blue look and feel for the site. Right now, we're only using it for CSS changes, but each theme can override the default theme in an inherited matter. At some point, we are seriously going to look at giving SN a facelift and moving away from the stock slashcode red. Now, with any change, there are those who will dislike it for one reason or another, but with a simple click in their preferences, they can simply go back to how the site was before.
Improved Threading (D1.5)
Perhaps our most user visible change with this release, this brings the discussion system out of 1997, and something closer to mid-2000s. For anyone who's ever used the old "Slashdot/SoylentNews Expandable Comment Tree", this is going to look familiar. I took the GPLv2-licensed GreaseMonkey script, modified it into a server-side script, then Paul went and made it work with CSS instead of page-scraping. The upshot?
A *massive* improvement to site usability, and threading, preventing you having to have millions of tabs open to follow any discussion. Now, obviously, there is still some room for improvement, such as an inline "Reply" box, but this should go a long way in helping in browsing comments. Due to the way its implemented, non-JS users will gracefully degrade to the "Threaded" view, and for those who simply hate it, feel free to flip your user preference from "Improved Threaded" to "Threaded" or "Nested.
Improved Threading is now the default for ACs, and if your preferences were set to Threaded or Nested, you were automatically upgraded. This feature, as with all features, will continue to keep evolve. If you're interested in improving it, and are good with JavaScript or CSS, come find us on IRC, and make yourselves known, or write a nifty GreaseMonkey script, and we'll migrate it into a server-side one.
NOTE: There was a slight goof which is causing Improved Threading to not quite work the way most people expect it to, its more "Improved Nested" at the moment. We're discussing on IRC about this right now, but as a workaround, set your browsing score to 4 which will make it work similar to the way its supposed to work).
Dead Code Removal/Site Optimizations
Inspired by the LibreSSL efforts to strip down and clarify OpenSSL, I've started undertaking a similar project through the codebase. As of now, approximately, 50k lines of code and other garbage have been jettisoned from the codebase, including most of the bloated and unused Javascript. As a practical upshot of this, our average page load size is now 3/5ths smaller than what it was in the previous release. There's still a fair bit of cruft in the codebase in the form of unused functions, dead code paths, and other junk, but I'm optimistic that by time we're done, we can skim another 10-15k lines of code out of the codebase, making it easier to audit and bugfix.
The following bits of code were completely removed:
- D2 (approximately 100 kiB of javascript per page load)
- Firehose
- Tags
- Jabber Integration
- World of Warcraft Integration
- Daypasses
- Many unused slash plugins
- Bitrotted support for PostgreSQL and Oracle (both very incomplete)
- Tagboxes (a MASSIVE amount code)
There's still a quite a bit of low hanging fruit, so if you like to blowtorch old codebases, grab the source and start deleting!
Subscriber Code Enabled
We're not offering subscriptions until post-incorporation, but we wanted to start looking and smoketesting this code in preparation for that happy day. Expect to see a few users with *'s after their name that marks them as a subscriber. As a note, the subscriber +1 pseudo-mod is disabled by default, so subscriber posts do not show up higher than they otherwise would.
I'd like to get a discussion going with the community on what sort of things you'd like to see from subscribing, so look for that article, and start brainstorming on what you would be willing to pay for (like shell accounts, USENET access, or some other service we could reasonable provide?)
I do hope you enjoy this round of fixes and improvements. That being said, I am sorry that some promised work didn't make it into this release, most importantly, moderation and metamoderation reworks. With luck, I'll find time between now and the next release to really start hammering on it, and then look at releasing it to production in the form of a point release. As always, post below, and know that your comments are helping decide the future of this site.
Until next time, NCommander
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Site Upgrade: Slashcode 14.06 Released
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less
than half of you half as well as you deserve.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NCommander on Saturday May 31 2014, @05:42PM
IT's a bug. We accidentally connected the improved threading code to the wrong variable in slash, so its affected based on score, NOT breakthrough which is the intended behavior. http://dev.soylentnews.org/ [soylentnews.org] has the corrected behavior, we're just making sure we didn't miss anything else since we reworked a LOT of the commenting the code. Expect a post about this in a bit.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by kbahey on Saturday May 31 2014, @05:50PM
Great! That is a relief ...
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning [2bits.com].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NCommander on Saturday May 31 2014, @06:33PM
A partial fix has been applied, it should be more consistent with what it should be.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by kbahey on Saturday May 31 2014, @06:45PM
Nope. Still seeing comments that are 1,2 and 3 threshold.
Don't go about experimenting with partial solutions.
Just update the post above saying that we know of the bug and working on it, then take your time to fix it properly.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning [2bits.com].
(Score: 1) by paulej72 on Saturday May 31 2014, @07:00PM
Is it still broken if you change back to threaded?
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 1) by kbahey on Saturday May 31 2014, @07:08PM
Yes. Still shows comments at threshold 1, 2 and 3, even if use "Threaded" and tell it to limit to 4.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning [2bits.com].
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Saturday May 31 2014, @08:52PM
A full fix has been applied. Writeup about this will come up after I've slept some.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Saturday May 31 2014, @07:20PM
We've determined that this behavior DOES happen with the older slashcode; sometimes comments with a lower-than-threshold score still show up despite the settings. We just made it worse inadvertently; Paul and I are working on it, but right now, comments now collaspe/extend properly. You just don't get the THreshold cutoff message at the moment.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by bziman on Saturday May 31 2014, @10:12PM
I've observed another oddity... I'm browsing with threshold/breakthrough at 1, flat, oldest first, and I noticed several posts either out of order, or with their time stamps wrong.
Screen shot at http://swisspig.net/images/snorder.png [swisspig.net].
Note that the first message is at 1:20 PM, the next at 11:27 AM, and the third at 2:14 PM.
Wait, is this because despite my having selected "flat" and "oldest first" it's grouping them by thread? I think it is... if so, then that is seriously broken.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Sunday June 01 2014, @01:45PM
That's ... odd. I'm not sure its a regression (though its definitely a bug); we're probably engaging the threadsorter even when in flat which is what's causing that; I don't think we've touched that bit of code at all so its likely been there from the beginning and just been noticed since everyone is poking threads now. Will poke paul to look at it, or will look at it myself this weekend.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by kbahey on Sunday June 01 2014, @12:38AM
It seems to have improved now.
No longer see comments below my threshold.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning [2bits.com].