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posted by paulej72 on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the kill-one-bug-find-another-must-be-cockroaches dept.

So the Dev Team has been hard at work fixing up issues with with the 17_02 release. We compiled all of your comments from the 17_02 Meta stories into a large bug and feature request list. We have been working on getting these issues fixed as soon as we can.

You may have noticed some changes over the last week that went out to fix some issues, and we just released some more fixes today.

Here is a list of the major fixes since the last story:

  1. Comment titles now act to trigger actions as well as the buttons.
  2. New icons for the buttons that are bigger and spaced out a bit more.
  3. Removed extra spacing for some of the modes when buttons are hidden. (Still needs some more work, but much better than before.)
  4. Changed how we set states for hidden threads so that the individual comments are not set hidden as well. This will lessen the number of clicks needed to open a comment in this case.
  5. Flat comment mode will now show a comment's children when look at comment (cid is set).
  6. Temp fix for Content Security Policy eating CSS when not on https://soylentnews.org.
  7. Domain Tags now show in comments.
  8. Fixed broken messages when looking at them from messages.pl.
  9. Fixed for @user: shortcut links that would eat a character after the ":".

And here are the latest updates:

  1. Editor fixes: added new lines to story editor and fixed topic tree popup issue.
  2. Fix for black on black text boxes in Grayscale theme
  3. Added SVG icons for buttons and CSS fixes to enhance look.
  4. Mod Points now back to UTC 00:10.
  5. Add # of children to collapsed thread title.
  6. Fix comment details to bring in the correct data which broke email and journal links.
  7. Add time to collapsed comment title.
  8. Fix select all button in messages.pl.
  9. Redirect returns to correct article.pl page after moderating.
  10. Updated CSP to fix issues. We still need to search for some inline JS that may need to be purged or rewritten to work correctly.

Continuation of:
Site Update 17_2
Comments Redux
Site Update: The Next Episode
Site Update - Taking a Breather
Outstanding Issues

So if you see any new bugs that you think are related to these changes, or just want to let us know about an ongoing issue, please feel free to comment below.

Here are the currently known bugs that we are working on:

  1. FIXED: When viewing the list of messages you have received, the "Select All" checkbox has stopped working because we removed Javascript.
  2. There are still features of the old "Nested" display mode that are not reproduced in the new "Threaded-TOS" / "Threaded-TNG" display modes.
  3. TESTING ON DEV: Issues with Expand/Collapse comment tree versus Hide/Show comment tree. New expand all in tree button.
  4. MOSTLY FIXED: We are aware of issues with our (stricter) Comment Security Policy (CSP) support; especially accessing the site from TOR/Onion and from the deprecated https://www.soylentnews.org/ URL — one should use: https://soylentnews.org/ instead, but we are still trying to handle that automatically.
  5. Pagination and Redirects; there are known issues with implementation of the "&page=" parameter in the URL, especially when "&cid=" is also specified. For example, I have my page size set to 20 comments, someone else has the default of 100 comments, and I refer to a comment on my page 4, which is still on page 1 for the other person.
  6. In URLs, we currently use "&noupdate=" to toggle when the "*NEW*" flag and comment dimming take effect. has knock-on side effects that were not anticipated. Are planning to change to the reverse sense: "&update=", instead.
  7. Lost functionality during upgrade: Sort order by comment score.
  8. FIXED: User Journal link missing in details bar
  9. Pick sane default for AC mode and for Threshold/Breakthrough
  10. Some people are still having issues with previously-seen comments' dimming. Not so much that they are dimmed, but in how they are dimmed. Maybe dim the only the title? Maybe change the color?
  11. Spoiler tag needs to be triggered by text.
  12. Buttons on phones might still be too small since mobile browsers like to resize the text larger making everything else too small
  13. SOMEWHAT FIXED: Bug chrome/android phone when previewing comment messes up text size in edit box -- actually, slashboxes on RHS disappear after submitting comment or performing comment moderation. Resulting display area is much wider, so displayed font size is reduced by approximately 40%.
  14. FIXED: Possibly add date and time to collapsed comment title.

And here are the feature requests:

  1. Create moderation feedback as a modal dialog box via CSS (med term project).
  2. <code> tag support and styling.
  3. Edit after post (with limits).
  4. Markdown support for comments. (long term project)
  5. Button to reset all comments to unread (should be a quickie).
  6. New tags should not display for the first time a story is shown (may be a complicated issue to resolve).

Related Stories

Site Update 17_2 193 comments

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


Comments Redux 113 comments

Continuation of: Site Update 2/27

So, the recent site update got a lot of news, and comments. Predictably, there was a lot of comments split on the fence both ways. I've been out sick and haven't been actively involved in SN in a few days, but I did review the updated changes on dev before they went out. I'm still not up to responding to you guys personally, and TMB/Paul have had things covered, so I'm just going to write a blanket story. So, let's open this and say THIS ISN'T THE FINAL SET OF HOW THINGS WILL BE. I'm leaving my comments above the fold to make it clear what's going on. I'd put that in a blink tag on if that was still in the HTML standard.

The changes to commenting were primarily driven on technical grounds. To do D1.5, the site had to load a mass load of comments and do server side processing to thread them. To give you an example, on a cold page load, before we apply caching a few points in the site would take over a minute to load, render and thread. The only thing that prevented the site from becoming unusable in 503s is that the frontend has a lot of caching. Even with that, we can't cache every single bit of the site at once. In a "cold cache" scenario such as after a varnish or DB update, the site would be borderline unusable until those caches could be loaded. So let me make this clear that this change wasn't a change for changes sake. There was (and is) a need to revamp the commenting.

We noted that this change was coming in other meta stories, and even had a landing article on dev for people coming to check it out. No one did. How we use commenting on dev and how we use it on production are two different things; you can't realistically test these things in real world conditions without updating production.

As TMB stated, we couldn't get the same behavior without making the site cry in the corner, and this was fairly extensively tested on dev before it went live. For older users to the site, you may remember this is not the first time we've changed comments, and rather predictably, the roll out of Improved Commenting actually was fairly buggy. This is a more drastic update.

Right now, we're going to keep improving and changing things to address as many things as possible. To that extent, there will be a daily article for at least this week if not longer to allow for feedback as we work to make things better. If, at the end of all the tweaking, we can't satisfy the vast majority of folks, a revert remains as an available option. We've built this entire site on listening to the community, and taking their feedback into account. That isn't going to change now. I'm hoping we've earned enough trust from you guys collectively to be allowed to at least experiment for a bit.

I'm going to leave the rest of the article for the dev crew to use. Due to personal real life issues, I'm likely not going to be around much, so if you don't see me, that's why. I have full faith in the staff in helping manage and keep things going.

~ NCommander

Hi! I'm martyb (aka Bytram) your friendly neighborhood QA/test guy chiming in with my 2ยข on the upgrade/rollout.

Firstly, I apologize that you are seeing ANY issues with the site upgrade. I took this update very seriously and was, unfortunately, only able to perform about half of the testing that I wanted to see done before we went live. That said, there are some issues that were reported that I had not foreseen, so this has been a learning experience for me, too.

Secondly, I'd like to point out what you are NOT seeing -- the many MANY changes that TMB and PJ made as a result of feedback arising from testing. That said, comments are THE thing that makes this site. It's not the timeliness or fine writing of the stories — as I see it, this site is all about providing a venue for discussion.

Look past the fold for the rest of my comments.

Site Update: The Next Episode 139 comments

Hi there. Martyb again with an update of our progress on issues arising from the site update. (The new comment grouping and display code was necessitated by huge server loads as well as long delays on constructing and returning highly-commented articles.)

First off, please accept my sincere thanks to all of you who made the time to comment in the prior stories and/or engaged us on the #dev channel on IRC. Really! Thank you for your passion and willingness to provide steps to reproduce and ideas for overcoming the issues that have been found.

ACs: If you access the site as an Anonymous Coward, be aware that we have NOT forgotten you. We are still trying to ascertain what features work best for the most people and are holding off changing (and rechanging and...) settings until we have a better idea of what to change those settings to be. So, please speak up on anything that you continue to find problematic and help guide us to making a choice that works the best for the most.

Scrolling Within a Comment: From what I saw in the reports from Monday, one of the key issues had to do with the scrolling within comments. We heard you. Oh, did we ever! Scrolling within comments was quickly removed and replaced by setting a limit on how long a comment could be submitted. This was especially problematic on mobiles and tablets.

Display Modes: Another of the often discussed issues had to do with "Display Mode." This can be set in your preferences (for logged-in users) and ad hoc when you load a story.

Display Mode - Defaults: If, prior to the release you had chosen "Flat", then you were transitioned to "Flat" (Doh!) If you had anything else as your selection for "Display Mode", you were transitioned to "Threaded-TOS". That mode was intended, as best as we were able to do using only CSS, to replicate the behavior previously supported by the old "Threaded" mode. You CAN change this. Many have reported that changing "Threaded-TOS" to "Threaded-TNG" and setting a lower value for "Breakthrough" (in this mode, "Threshold" is ignored) seemed to do the trick.

Display Mode - ad hoc setting: For the ad hoc case, just load the story as you normally would. Below the actual story text and before the comments is a set of controls. If you are having issues with the current default of "Threaded-TOS" click on that text and change it to "Threaded-TNG". if you find you have way too many icons to click in order to read comments, choose a smaller value for Breakthrough (-1 displays all; in this mode Threshold value is ignored).

Spoiler: Another popular topic of discussion was the way the new <spoiler> tag was implemented. We've heard you, but have not as yet decided on a course of action on how to update its functionality... Stay tuned!

*NEW* and/or Dimming: A surprising (to me at least) number of folks had issues with how we flagged old/new comments. For logged-in users, again go to the "Comments" tab of your "preferences" page, scroll down a little, and there are checkboxes that you can toggle:

Highlight New Comments [ ] Highlight new comments with *NEW* tag
Dim Read Comments [ ] Dim already read comments

Please give those a try and see if that works for you. Our first implementation of "Dimming" was a bit too strong for most folk's liking - this has been reduced so as to be less jarring. As for the "*NEW*" text, there were several positive comments that on mobile devices especially, one could quickly search for the text and rapidly navigate comments to find out what was new. There was a suggestion that uppercase-only looks like YELLING. Yes, it does. On the other hand, whatever text is selected for display has to be a reasonably unlikely string to appear in the normal course of reading comments. (False positives, anyone?)

There were some suggestions on changing the color of the comment title to flag it as new. This sounds pretty simple, but the devil is in the details. We have some in our community who are color-blind and others who have very limited vision, if any at all. For them, any color changes could be well nigh invisible. But it gets worse. On the "Homepage" tab of the "Preferences" page, there are currently 11 different themes that one can choose as your default. Setting a new comment to have a lighter (or darker) title bar would not work across all of those disparate themes.

Chevrons: And as for those chevrons that control the display of a single comment and of a comment tree, yes we heard you. Work is underway to see if we can replace those images with single/double plus/minus characters.

Penultimately, I would like to add a call-out to Paulej72 who took point yesterday (giving TheMightyBuzzard a well-deserved respite) and worked tirelessly into the night to address the issues that were raised.

Lastly, again many thanks to you, our community, who have guided us through this transition. Your feedback matters. We listen and for those who have been following along, I hope you can see the changes and the progress. We continue to strive to earn your trust and support. Thank you!

Dev Note: Currently there is an issue with Flat mode and viewing single comments such as https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=18223&cid=472653. It just came to our attention and we will be working on it to fix it. This issue will cause you to get a server error. Workarounds are to either switch modes to anything other than Flat or avoid going to single comment views.

Continuation of:
Site Update 17_2
Comments Redux

Site Update - Taking a Breather 62 comments

Martyb here once again with today's update on our site's update. I apologize that this is not as well written as my prior updates as exhaustion and outside issues are demanding of my time. I ask you to please bear with me.

Quick Recap: As you may recall, our servers were getting melted trying to serve up highly-commented stories. Further, this made for an unacceptably long delay between the time one would request a story and when it would finally get returned for display. Our devs have implemented alternative display modes, "Threaded-TOS" and "Threaded-TNG" which use a much more efficient means of processing comments and getting them to you. These changes went "live" on Saturday, February 25.

Like anything new, we expected there would be issues. We very much appreciate your patience as we tried to work through these as they were reported. And did you ever let us know!

Paulej72 (aka PJ) and TheMightyBuzzard (TMB) have been laboring mightily to keep up with the issues that have been reported as well as a few they found independently. Similarly, as their fixes have gone live, our community has had to deal with a changing landscape of "what happens when I do this?" To add to this, comments being such a major part of the site's purpose, there are "knobs" in several places where users can customize which comments are presented to them and how they appear. The permutations are many and wide-raging. As bug fixes have been made, the impact of changing these has had different effects over time.

I've been astounded at how much the community has been supportive of our efforts, how well problems have been described and isolated, and how quickly the devs have been able to fix bugs as they have been noted. Even more impressive was the discussion in our last update story on possible alternative means of implementing the <spoiler> tag. I'm proud to be part of this community — you rock!

Stories: While all this activity has been happening, stories have still been posted to our site for your reading and commenting pleasure. We are working with a reduced editorial staff at the moment. Us long-timers have been posting as we can, but I would like to personally thanks our new editors fnord666 and charon for their heroic efforts getting stories posted, and takyon for his continued efforts at providing well-written stories. I have noticed submissions from new folks as well, and the heartens me immensely! (Note: I hesitate to call out people in particular for fear I will overlook someone; any omission is purely my fault and I would appreciate being called out on it if I have failed to list your contribution.)

Plans: This development blitz has, however, come at a cost. For those who were with this site at its inception, there was a "day of rest" imposed on the developers who had worked basically non-stop trying to get our site up and somewhat stable. I have suggested a similar break to our dev staff. Recall we are all volunteers doing this in our spare time. PJ has plans coming up and will be unavailable on Friday and Saturday. From what I've seen, TMB is well nigh a crispy critter at this point and most certainly needs a break. And, quite frankly, I've put a lot of personal stuff on hold while working on this update and could use a break, as well. In short, we are tired.

So, PJ is around for a bit (in his free time while at work) for today and TMB is getting a well-deserved breather. NCommander is nearing burnout has been tied up with an outside project that demands his full attention and has been unable to help much. I'll poke in from time to time, but I really need some time off, too.

What I ask from the community is that we do something similar. Step back for a moment. Look at the forest and not just the trees. Play around with the different display Modes. Try setting a different "Breakthrough" and/or "Threshold". Things should be much more stable today, so that will make it easier to gain a "mental model" of what does what.

The other thing I would ask is for the community to pull together and try to address issues together. Someone posts an issue about struggling with having to click on all the little chevrons? Inquire about their user preference settings, and suggest a different value for Threshold/Breakthrough. My sense is that some are more adept at using the new features and they can help others to get a better understanding of how things work. With those issues addressed, we can more clearly identify and isolate underlying problems and focus our energies more productively.

tl;dr We're not done yet, we truly appreciate your patience and forbearance during this transition, we need a break, and you guys rock in helping others in the community understand and use the new stuff. As always, keep our toes to the fire — we are here for you — let us catch our breath and we'll be better able to move forward.

Continuation of:
Site Update 17_2
Comments Redux
Site Update: The Next Episode
Site Update - We're Getting There!

Outstanding Issues 39 comments

Okay, we've all had our weekends and I at least am ready to jump back onto the coding horse. Refresh my memory of what we still have that's either properly broken or is otherwise behaving in an entirely unsatisfactory manner. I think Flat-mode links to individual comments are still broken. I know we need to replace the "noupdate" behavior with explicit "update" behavior. I'm thinking I can get the colors on "*NEW*" comments' subject bars brightened up so that you can ditch dimming and still have easy visual feedback if you like fairly quickly. I'm considering (nearly (can't do "N replies below Threshold)) precisely replicating Nested and adapting the old javascript to it if you care to run it. But what am I forgetting?

Discussion to a minimum here, please, so it doesn't distract from having an all-in-one-place list of things from this release that still need addressed.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
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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.
(1)
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @02:28PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @02:28PM (#478914)

    If you connect using http://soylentnews.org [soylentnews.org] you get a "nginx has been successfully installed" page rather than getting redirected to https://soylentnews.org [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @02:34PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @02:34PM (#478919)

      Only for users who aren't logged in.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by paulej72 on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:27PM (3 children)

      by paulej72 (58) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:27PM (#478950) Journal

      Fixed

      --
      Team Leader for SN Development
      • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday March 17 2017, @10:07AM (1 child)

        by TheRaven (270) on Friday March 17 2017, @10:07AM (#480324) Journal
        There appears to be a bug with the 'new' detection, where if someone replies to one of your posts and you visit that post via the message centre, then when you go to the story link all of the posts are marked as not-new (and therefore difficult to read).

        It also appears that someone has added support for person-to-person messaging, but only sort-of. I have a message in my inbox from another Soylent user, but there's no 'reply' button or similar, so I have no idea how to reply.

        --
        sudo mod me up
        • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:29PM

          by paulej72 (58) on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:29PM (#481113) Journal

          The first issue is know and will be working on that soon.

          The second issue is an admin to user message. The editors use this the most and are supposed to let the user know how to contact them. When we added this feature, we were not sure how to add the reverse messaging without creating a whole spamming problem so we did not implement it.

          I guess we should revisit this.

          --
          Team Leader for SN Development
      • (Score: 2) by goodie on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:34PM

        by goodie (1877) on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:34PM (#481207) Journal

        Somebody should make a note of this, it comes back at every new version deployment lol ;-)

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @02:45PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @02:45PM (#478924)

    On the main page, where each story shows "n comments", can we have something like "n comments (m read)" or "n comments (m unread)"?

    • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:28PM (3 children)

      by paulej72 (58) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:28PM (#478952) Journal

      Yes, I thought of this, and mentioned it on IRC, but I missed adding it to the list. I"ll add it to the feature requests.

      --
      Team Leader for SN Development
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @04:26PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @04:26PM (#478978)

        I'd like to see a number for each threshold. This would be especially helpful with slow browsers and slow connections. For example:

        3 8 22 46 91 or 93 comments

        (the "3" is score 5, the "91" is score 0, the "93" is score -1)

        • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Tuesday March 14 2017, @05:00PM (1 child)

          by paulej72 (58) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @05:00PM (#478991) Journal

          This would not make a difference. We changed how comment are sent and any threshold level will yield the same download speed. We limit file size with the pagination of comments.

          --
          Team Leader for SN Development
          • (Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday March 14 2017, @05:14PM

            by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 14 2017, @05:14PM (#478995) Journal

            I'd like to see a number for each threshold. This would be especially helpful with slow browsers and slow connections. For example:

            3 8 22 46 91 or 93 comments

            (the "3" is score 5, the "91" is score 0, the "93" is score -1)

            This would not make a difference. We changed how comment are sent and any threshold level will yield the same download speed. We limit file size with the pagination of comments.

            I think what the GP is requesting is that, say I have just a couple minutes to read a story. At the moment, I see there are 93 comments. I know I do not have enough time to read all 93 comments. Hmm, even 22 would be too many, so I'll click on the "8" and only see the +4 moderated stories.

            IIRC, there was support in the ancient inherited code for something like this... called breadcrumbs or some such. Whether it could be easily merged into the new comment processing code is another matter, entirely.

            Of course, things start getting really interesting when one adds in the concept of how many of those are new and how many have already been read... how do you compute and display all of that in a reasonable fashion?

            --
            Wit is intellect, dancing.
  • (Score: 1) by DavePolaschek on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:12PM (5 children)

    by DavePolaschek (6129) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:12PM (#478936) Homepage Journal

    The tags have links like <a href="//soylentnews.org/meta/search.pl?tid=8" class="topic2">Soylent</a> but the href isn't valid (no https: in it), so the link isn't clickable, so I am sad.

    Not sure it it's a pre-existing problem or not.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @04:24PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @04:24PM (#478976)

      For me they work just fine. And I always thought the browser was supposed to auto-fill the missing initial part anyway (so the omission of the protocol actually means that the link works on both http and https, leading you to the same type of protocol for the target as the one used for the current page), which is exactly what Firefox seems to do.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by NCommander on Tuesday March 14 2017, @04:54PM (2 children)

      by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Tuesday March 14 2017, @04:54PM (#478989) Homepage Journal

      a href=// is valid by spec, it means use the same protocol as this page was loaded on. It was a holdover from when we supported both HTTP and HTTPS before fully switching over to the later. Which browser is choking? Those links work right in both Chrome and Firefox. The themes haven't been edited because for dev systems, HTTPS can be a headache.

      --
      Still always moving
      • (Score: 1) by DavePolaschek on Tuesday March 14 2017, @06:35PM (1 child)

        by DavePolaschek (6129) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @06:35PM (#479044) Homepage Journal

        I'm using latest Safari (10.0.3)on Mac 10.12.3

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:32PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:32PM (#479446)

          Then maybe you should file a bug report for Safari.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:56PM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:56PM (#479457) Homepage Journal

      That's a valid href value. The protocol is supposed to be matched by the browser to whatever protocol you got to the page with. Browser bug on your end.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:15PM (13 children)

    by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:15PM (#478940) Journal

    I didn't particularly like the previous icons, but I really hate these new ones.
    What's wrong with a standard +/- type icon.? There are loads of them on http://www.iconarchive.com/ [iconarchive.com] to choose from - a lot of them are Commercial Free too.

    Something like :

    + : http://www.iconarchive.com/show/windows-8-icons-by-icons8/Science-Plus-Math-icon.html [iconarchive.com]
    - : http://www.iconarchive.com/show/windows-8-icons-by-icons8/Science-Minus-Math-icon.html [iconarchive.com]

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @04:16PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @04:16PM (#478972)

      I don't know what you see, but I see exactly a "+" resp. "-" icon; the main difference from those linked by you being that they are black on white instead of white on black (and frankly, black on white looks better IMHO).

      The only thing I don't like is that they are now too large. I liked the size of the previous ones much better.

      • (Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:26PM (1 child)

        by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:26PM (#479170) Journal

        This is what I see - https://imgur.com/a/c95jM [imgur.com]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:17PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:17PM (#479438)

          And how is that not a "−" Icon? (Well, the second one is a "two-minus" icon, but it would be very confusing if the same icon would be used for different functionality!)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @04:23PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @04:23PM (#478975)

      I don't know what you are seeing, but I'm seeing the same as your example, aside from size and color.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Tuesday March 14 2017, @05:09PM (6 children)

      by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @05:09PM (#478993) Journal
      The problem with the current icons seems to be that they've been antialiased for a low resolution display, so on a high-DPI screen they just look blurry.
      --
      sudo mod me up
      • (Score: 2) by RedBear on Tuesday March 14 2017, @06:55PM (5 children)

        by RedBear (1734) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @06:55PM (#479063)

        The problem with the current icons seems to be that they've been antialiased for a low resolution display, so on a high-DPI screen they just look blurry.

        Yes, exactly. These icons seem to have been created the same way as the previous chevron icons, which were created by The Mighty Buzzard who readily admitted to having very little knowledge of how to use a graphics editor. If you zoom in on them you'll notice that even the sides of the boxes are sort of grayish and fuzzy looking instead of black. I suspect the method of creation was to make a tiny "rounded rectangle" shape, as this is usually what happens. The corners are horrible, the sides are horrible, the shapes inside are fuzzy. The whole icon is just totally lacking any sort of precision, as if it's been improperly anti-aliased. TMB is doing many great things for us with this website but graphic design is obviously not his forte.

        Surely there is someone around here who can whip up a nice set of icons that will look infinitely better than this and scale properly to different screen sizes and zoom levels. Don't pretty much all browsers support SVG icons by now?

        --
        ยฏ\_ส•โ—”.โ—”ส”_/ยฏ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
        ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. ๅฝกส•โŒโ– .โ– ส”
        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:03PM (4 children)

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:03PM (#479163) Journal

          What's wrong with SVG icons?

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:05AM (3 children)

            by paulej72 (58) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:05AM (#479212) Journal

            Contrary to what RedBear stated I created the current +/- icons and the chevrons and tweaked the ones in the JS version. I had not thought of doing SVG icons, but I will look into it. It would definitely help on high res screens.

            --
            Team Leader for SN Development
            • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:12AM (1 child)

              by paulej72 (58) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:12AM (#479228) Journal

              Looks like SVG is mostly supported: http://svgtutorial.com/svg-browser-support/. [svgtutorial.com] I wonder how this would be for the older Android users?

              --
              Team Leader for SN Development
              • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:48PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:48PM (#479423)

                I wonder how this would be for the older Android users?

                I think the age of the user doesn't matter. :-)

            • (Score: 2) by RedBear on Monday March 20 2017, @01:14AM

              by RedBear (1734) on Monday March 20 2017, @01:14AM (#481309)

              paulej72:

              My mistake thinking TMB was responsible for the icons. The new ones are looking quite good. Both on the red bar and in the gray page background. Not as "crisp" as what I was imagining but these heavy outlines may actually be better, especially for smaller screens. Well done.

              I'll now test the character-eating bug: @12:34 AM (and... Preview) Hey, it works now. Nice.

              You're all doing great work. Take a break.

              --
              ยฏ\_ส•โ—”.โ—”ส”_/ยฏ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
              ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. ๅฝกส•โŒโ– .โ– ส”
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:04PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:04PM (#479164)

      Instead of image based, why not just text? That should get the same rendering treatment than the phrases, titles, etc.

  • (Score: 2) by GlennC on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:55PM (3 children)

    by GlennC (3656) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:55PM (#478965)

    I used to be able to click on one + and have all of a comment's replies expanded.

    I'd like to request that this feature be put back.

    Frankly, the site appeared to be working perfectly fine as it was. Why muck around with things?

    --
    Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by NCommander on Tuesday March 14 2017, @04:16PM (2 children)

      by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Tuesday March 14 2017, @04:16PM (#478973) Homepage Journal

      The comment coding had to be extensively rewritten because we were getting up to 1m load times on the backend without caching on articles with more than 50 or so comments. See the first or second post in the series which goes into the technical reasons why the system was replaced.

      --
      Still always moving
      • (Score: 2) by GlennC on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:08AM

        by GlennC (3656) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:08AM (#479226)

        Okay, that's a good reason.

        However, I'd still like the old buttons to expand all comments.

        --
        Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:13PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:13PM (#481153)

        Load times seemed fine to me...then again, I use Tor. If there are many comments on a page, I will typically spend much longer than a minute with it.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @05:35PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @05:35PM (#479003)

    Regarding Known Bug #10:

    Some people are still having issues with previously-seen comments' dimming. Not so much that they are dimmed, but in how they are dimmed. Maybe dim the only the title? Maybe change the color?

    I love the current system, and have used Stylish to dim comments even more (down to opacity:0.55). However, I find bright text or high contrast between text and background almost painful to read, and I'm aware that I'm an outlier. So I have two suggestions/requests:

    1. You could add user options, "For read comments, dim: only title / whole comment" and "Dim amount: xx %". Disclaimer, I don't know how difficult those would be to implement. I think the first one, at least, should be fairly simple, but my web coding experience is very limited :)
    2. If you change to "tiltle only" dimming, please leave in a CSS hook for the entire comment, so that we can use Stylish to customize.

    Finally, my sincere thanks to the Dev Team, you people are awesome.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by pTamok on Tuesday March 14 2017, @05:53PM

      by pTamok (3042) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @05:53PM (#479014)

      I'll add my thanks to the Dev team.

      It certainly helps considerably to have 'Meta' postings explaining why certain changes have been made. While I might dislike some of the changes, when I understand why they have been made, it makes them more palatable.

      I am also very happy that some of the snazzy new features can be turned off in preferences. This is good. I know some people like the comment dimming. My first thought when I saw it happening was to be worried that my eyesight had suddenly got worse, and after my first panicked thought of macular degeneration striking, I was very glad to find it was intended user interface behaviour. And I was even happier to find I could turn it off!

      I'm very grateful that you are putting in the time and trouble to keep the site ticking over. Well done.

    • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday March 14 2017, @06:58PM (2 children)

      by wonkey_monkey (279) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @06:58PM (#479067) Homepage

      Perhaps just unbolding read comments would suffice.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk
      • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:02AM (1 child)

        by paulej72 (58) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:02AM (#479209) Journal

        Our old js based code had only one set of icons that were used on all themes. We had to style them so they always worked. To keep things simple. I have only created one set of the new icons.

        I think we may need to create theme specific icons that fit better in terms of colors and contrast.

        --
        Team Leader for SN Development
        • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:49PM

          by wonkey_monkey (279) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:49PM (#479482) Homepage

          I like the change from the single/double arrows to +/-. For some reason I've always found arrows ambiguous. Is a down arrow saying "click here to open the comment below" or is it saying "the comment below is already open; click here to close it?"

          For some reason +/- doesn't have that ambiguity for me.

          --
          systemd is Roko's Basilisk
    • (Score: 2) by andersjm on Tuesday March 14 2017, @07:46PM (5 children)

      by andersjm (3931) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @07:46PM (#479100)

      However, I find bright text or high contrast between text and background almost painful to read

      Perhaps you should dial down on the brightness or contrast of your monitor.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:46PM (#479151)

        Perhaps you should dial down on the brightness or contrast of your monitor.

        Brightness 30%, contrast 50%. Any lower and UIs, videos, and games start looking problematic :)

      • (Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:47AM (3 children)

        by Magic Oddball (3847) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:47AM (#479336) Journal

        If it's the same problem I have, then that will only alleviate the problem plus make it harder to read the black text. It's pretty much a persistent variant of the photosensitivity that most people only experience with nasty hangovers or migraine headaches.

        My usual solution is to use Stylish to rewrite the CSS on websites I visit regularly that force a white background or other color/contrast combos that hurt my eyes.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by andersjm on Wednesday March 15 2017, @09:41PM (1 child)

          by andersjm (3931) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @09:41PM (#479588)

          Sorry if I was being callous. A lot of people leave brightness and contrast at the factory setting, so it seemed like a good bet at the time.

          In reality you are a victim of the web designer conspiracy: Your browser most likely has settings for foreground and background colour, and font, and a properly designed web page would use these user preferences for body text. Unfortunately there are no properly designed web pages these days; every single web designer in the last 20 years have failed in that task, deciding instead that they know better than you what the text you read should look like.

          Perhaps SN could buck the trend? My suggestion would be a binary user setting, "respect the reader's font and colour preferences in body text", which when set would mean zero CSS styling on <p>, allowing your browser preferences to stand.

          • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Thursday March 16 2017, @02:50PM

            by paulej72 (58) on Thursday March 16 2017, @02:50PM (#479807) Journal

            Also the reverse of this issue is what I hear most. That there is not enough contrast between the background and the foreground. This is one of the things I try to keep in mind when choosing colors for themes. I try not to get below 50% difference, like doing 40% gray on white, but doing 40% gray on black would be acceptable.

            It is very hard to have one theme work for everyone, but I do think the Grayscale theme may be good for people who need lower contrast. And I do have the fix for that in testing, and it should go up this weekend, along with fixes for some of the other issues mentioned here.

            --
            Team Leader for SN Development
        • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:00PM

          by deimtee (3272) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:00PM (#479591) Journal

          I have a similar issue with some high contrast themes. Have you tried the "Grayscale" theme in prefs? I found it the easiest on my eyes. It currently has a slight bug with almost black text on a black background when typing comments, but Paulej72 has said that it will be fixed later this week.

          --
          If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 14 2017, @06:25PM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 14 2017, @06:25PM (#479034) Journal

    Went to "messages" and clicked on my own posts, to read the responses under them. Sometimes, you want to look back at the previous portion of the conversation, so you click "parent" - and got an error to the effect that "message not found".

    I just attempted to reproduce that, and it failed to reproduce the error message, LOL. I got the parent post, as I've always expected to happen.

    Double checked by clicking the link to the response to my own post, then tried "parent', and it works that way too.

    You guys are so good, you manage to fix my complaints before I even post them!

    • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:59PM

      by paulej72 (58) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:59PM (#479208) Journal

      We had a time where links were getting mangled and ones created by the messaging system would have persisted. I believe that they are all fixed except with respect to noupdate.

      --
      Team Leader for SN Development
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @07:16PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @07:16PM (#479079)

    Thanks for all the work. I love SN!

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by AnonTechie on Tuesday March 14 2017, @08:43PM

      by AnonTechie (2275) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @08:43PM (#479124) Journal

      I second that. Great job people. Thanks for all your effort, time, sweat, tears, ...

      --
      Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:14PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:14PM (#479140)

    You finally broke something WRT the Degrades Gracefully paradigm.
    (I don't download any CSS.)
    Something containing label class="commentTreeHider" will display the comment subject twice on the same line (duplicating what is mated with label class="commentHider").

    .
    Typo spotted in summary:
    s/feeback/feedback

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:55PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:55PM (#479184)
      1. Buy a 56k modem
      2. Download CSS
      3. Enjoy!
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:15AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:15AM (#479248)

        3. Get unwanted sidebars and something other than black text on a white background.
        4. Don't enjoy.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:02PM (2 children)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:02PM (#479462) Homepage Journal

      The degrades gracefully rule only applies to javascript. The site looks like complete ass without CSS, so we don't make allowances for not using it.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @01:38AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @01:38AM (#479631)

        I disagree.
        For 3 years, it looked quite presentable.
        It wasn't until this most recent update that I noticed anything odd WRT Degrades Gracefully.

        It's not a huge deal. It's simply odd.
        (I have noticed a similar oddness with a dup'd headline at Common Dreams[1] after their most recent update.
        These 2 are the only sites where I have noticed this particular anomaly.)

        [1] With that site, I can get past that point using a #FragmentIdentifier.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 16 2017, @10:53AM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday March 16 2017, @10:53AM (#479726) Homepage Journal

          You're free to feel this way but you must know you're pretty much a demographic of one in your quirky way of visiting the site, yes? That's not to say we for sure won't accommodate you in the upcoming attempt at Improved Nested(?) (essentially Nested with the old js buttons revamped for it), just that if something benefits N-1 users and inconveniences 1... Well that ain't complex algebra there.

          For the immediate term, I'd say use something like Stylish or some other way of injecting a tiny bit of user-supplied CSS to make it tolerable to you, because Gracefully Degrades was never, and probably will never be, meant to apply to CSS.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:27PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:27PM (#479143)

    Someone seems to have moved UTC back by 5 hours, at least as far as mod point distribution time is concerned. Anyone else seeing this?

    • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:56PM (7 children)

      by paulej72 (58) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:56PM (#479206) Journal

      When we upgraded to 16_02 last year, the mod points were handed out at 00:10 UTC, but I felt this should have been closer to midnight EST. So one of the first changes I added was to make this mod points be handed out at 05:10. This was merged to master in March of 16. One of the first merges for what is now 17_02. Little did I expect that this would be a one year in the making change.

      So now the new norm is 0510, and everyone should become used to it at some point.

      --
      Team Leader for SN Development
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by paulej72 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:28AM (6 children)

        by paulej72 (58) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:28AM (#479216) Journal

        Well after discussing this with martyb we decided to change it back for now to UTC 00:10. After we get some of the other issues worked out we discuss it with everyone and see if we should change it.

        --
        Team Leader for SN Development
        • (Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:24AM (3 children)

          by aristarchus (2645) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:24AM (#479276) Journal

          Noticed. For some reason, as much as I respect and admire the dev team here at SoylentNews, even including the Might Fuzz, I am not quite comfortable with you all messing with the space-time continuum!! UTC should be Universal Time Coordinates, so you can't just go switching it back and forth like it was some Nintendo Switch. . . . oh, excuse me, there has been a terrible disturbance in the Farce.

          But seriously: There is no reason for the reset on mod points to be 12am EDT, unless SoylentNews is just some punk American site. And we know it is not. Think about the Australians, just waking up and having to deal with drop-bears and Bufo-toads, again! Think about the Chinese, and all the tea in China, and cell phones! Think about the Silk Roaders in Samarkarand! And think about the Turks, Bulgarians, Hungarians, and the Gariangarians, and the Czechs. So I say, let the chips fall where they may! If god did not want UTC to be Greenwich Mean Time, he would not have put England at the center of the world. Just saying. Bloody Brits!

          • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:17AM (2 children)

            by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:17AM (#479663) Journal

            Hmm, modded flamebait? Well, it is conceivable. But point remains, that yesterday, GMT and UTC were where they were supposed to be. And today? I presume +5? Or are you just playing with me? This has all the marks of a Mighty Buzz practical joke. It's just like that time when we put a fish on his hook, just to make him think he actually caught something!!! Ha! That was sooooo funny! The look on his face! But then he saw the price tag from the grocery store that we forgot to take off. Damn.

            • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:06AM (1 child)

              by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:06AM (#479672) Journal

              Watching! UTC 5:06! This is not a big thing.

              • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:12AM

                by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:12AM (#479673) Journal

                UTC 5:10: internal server error, but upon refresh, I have five freshly minted mod points. So we are going with this? Or is it just me?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:11PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:11PM (#479435)

          What about setting the maximal number of mod points to 6, and handing out a new one every 4 hours for any account that is below 6 points at that time? That would evenly spread it out across the time zones.

          Note also that calculation of mod points could be done lazy (assuming that isn't already done anyway): Only when someone accesses the page from his account, he can see and use the mod points; so the code could just fetch the mod points and time of last update from the database (it has to fetch the mod points anyway, and if the time stamp is in the same table, it should not require any additional database lookups), check if any new points have been handed out in between, and if necessary update the points accordingly. At the time of giving out mod points, nothing special would need to happen.

          Indeed, the update of stored mod points in the data base would only be required when actually moderating.

        • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Friday March 17 2017, @01:51AM

          by paulej72 (58) on Friday March 17 2017, @01:51AM (#480145) Journal

          Well I thought I changed this, but the change did not take. I restarted the backend service and I hope that point will go out at 00:10 UTC. I just manually run the update now so you should all see your points now.

          --
          Team Leader for SN Development
  • (Score: 2) by halcyon1234 on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:37PM (1 child)

    by halcyon1234 (1082) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:37PM (#479148)
    Re: click to collapse/expand titles. Love it. A note: there's a "gutter" a few pixels high at the bottom of the clickable area. If I click the bottom of a title, and the UI collapses, I can't click again to expand without moving the mouse. The height of the clickable area (and position) should be the same between the two states:
    http://i.imgur.com/U9YTbxe.png [imgur.com]
    --
    Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]
    • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:43PM

      by paulej72 (58) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:43PM (#479204) Journal

      Yes the css needs a tweak. Some of this is due to the collapsed state does not have bold titles. I'll get to it shortly.

      --
      Team Leader for SN Development
  • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:57PM (2 children)

    by deimtee (3272) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:57PM (#479158) Journal

    I like using the "Grayscale" theme, but if you try to reply with it active, you get to type unreadable, almost black, text into a black box. (Both subject and comment)

    --
    If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
    • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:42PM (1 child)

      by paulej72 (58) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:42PM (#479203) Journal

      Noted and fixed for my next pull. Probably will go up later this week.

      --
      Team Leader for SN Development
      • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:41AM

        by deimtee (3272) on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:41AM (#482037) Journal

        Much better. Thanks. :)

        --
        If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @02:11AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @02:11AM (#479642)

    Sequence:

    Load a story
    Below the story there are two links -- previous_story | next_story
    Page down further
    Moderate one of the comments
    Scroll back up toward the top
    The two links to -- previous_story | next_story -- are gone
    Click on story title and then they come back (does this do a full reload of the page?)

    I've seen this a few times since the update. It's pretty minor so I wasn't in a hurry to post.
      I'm logged in | Breakthrough -1 | Threaded-TNG | VT100 mode (green screen)

    The update certainly solves the long loading times when there are many comments. Good work!

    • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:00PM (1 child)

      by paulej72 (58) on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:00PM (#479814) Journal

      Hrmm, I thought I was redirecting back to the same page after moderation. I guess I need to check that to make sure.

      --
      Team Leader for SN Development
      • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Friday March 17 2017, @01:46AM

        by paulej72 (58) on Friday March 17 2017, @01:46AM (#480144) Journal

        Fix one bug and out poops another. One of my previous fixes broke the redirect, but I have new code that should go out this weekend that fixes this issue.

        --
        Team Leader for SN Development
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:21PM (#479874)

      [same AC that started this subject]

      Same thing seems to be true after posting a comment to a story.
      Then, scrolling back to the top the two links to -- previous_story | next_story -- are gone.

      Just a minor annoyance...but sometimes little bugs like this turn up other, larger problems?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @02:06AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @02:06AM (#481325)

      I'm assuming this bug was named:
          Redirect returns to correct article.pl page after moderating.

      It's fixed now, Thanks!!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @02:39PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @02:39PM (#479797)

    I just noticed that I get a button "moderator help" at the end of the comments. Not a big deal, but somewhat pointless given that as AC I cannot moderate.

    • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:02PM (1 child)

      by paulej72 (58) on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:02PM (#479818) Journal

      I thought of removing this when a person can't moderate, but I decided to leave it in, because it acts a help button for someone expecting to moderate, but can't.

      I guess we could remove it for AC users only. I think I need to ponder this for a bit.

      --
      Team Leader for SN Development
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:43PM (#479848)

        My vote (as AC, but logged in) is to leave the Moderator Help button as it currently is, visible to everyone.

        At some point it might be worth editing the text, for example, this section (or words to the same effect) could be moved from the bottom to near the top?

        Log in as a registered user:
                I know, this sounds obvious but, "Anonymous Coward" does not have a karma rating. You can't reap the perceived benefits of your own accidental brilliance if you post anonymously. Have pride in your work and take credit for it.

  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:13PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:13PM (#481154)

    How about finally changing Anonymous Coward to anonymous?

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:38PM (3 children)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:38PM (#481170) Journal

      Why?

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:59PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:59PM (#481201)

        We are Anonymous Coward. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us to run in terror.

        • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:31PM

          by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:31PM (#481219)

          If you are Legion, does that make us Phalanx?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @09:50PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @09:50PM (#481267)

        Being anonymous is an act of necessity, not cowardice.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:36PM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:36PM (#481169) Journal

    I couldn't tell if the ++ button has changed in this version (I browse at -1). It looks like there is still no "one click expands all" solution.

    Clicking on comment titles looks decent. Probably more useful for mobile users.

    I think the spoiler would be better as an inline (span) rather than block (div) element. Height/width of the element would be based on the amount of text in it + the *SPOILER* (:before), and the height would not change when you hover over it. I could look at the CSS for this if anyone's interested.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by paulej72 on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:37PM

      by paulej72 (58) on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:37PM (#481210) Journal

      Expand all is in testing on dev. That set of updates also kills off a lot of unused and broken JavaScript from the page loads, so it will need some testing before deployment.

      --
      Team Leader for SN Development
  • (Score: 2) by GlennC on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:10PM

    by GlennC (3656) on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:10PM (#481228)

    If I click on the "Home" button at the bottom of the page, I get the section home and not the main page.

    As an example, the "Home" button for this article takes me to https://soylentnews.org/meta. [soylentnews.org]

    --
    Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
  • (Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Monday March 20 2017, @01:31AM (1 child)

    by Magic Oddball (3847) on Monday March 20 2017, @01:31AM (#481313) Journal

    I've had quite a few times now where I got partway through a page of comments, then either decided to reply to something or quickly check a link someone posted, then came back only to find the text all of the comments I hadn't gotten to yet have been marked "read" and thus dimmed to gray. When there's only a dozen comments that's no big deal, but when it's a few dozen it becomes a bit annoying.

    The easiest solution I can come up with for this (since I know many people like the mass-dimming approach) would be to offer two built-in stylesheets with a built-in on-page switch so users can switch between them on the fly. The two options might be "dim title & text for 'read' comments" and "new/unread comment title gradient is [red/blue, green/black, whatever]."

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday March 20 2017, @11:18AM

      I think what we've got slated is to not actually mark any comments "read" until you explicitly hit the button to do so and only dim the title bars of the ones you've read so the text stays as visible as ever. That work?

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @07:26AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @07:26AM (#483552)

    Or to be more exact, feature request: Add main link field. Almost all our stories are about a link after all.

    I just submitted a story only to notice afterwards (why is it always so...) that I forgot to include the actual link. Fortunately it is easy to discover it based on the info I included but this kind of stupidity could be blocked by a smarter submission form. This would help moronic submitters like yours truly.

    Facepalm.jpg

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