from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed,-avoid-skydiving-or-making-immediate-changes-directly-to-live-systems dept.
[2020-03-21 15:06:00 UTC: Update 1:
(1) Reminder: this has so far been implemented only on our *development* server (https://dev.soylentnews.org/); it has NOT yet been rolled out to this (the production) servers.
(2) The control (now a simple text link, no longer a button) no longer defaults to taking up a whole physical line immediately above the first comment.
(3) Please note that in certain corner-cases, it is possible that screen size limitations may cause an overflow onto the next line.
(4) And the control should now appear aligned-right in the story header. =)
--martyb]
[2020-03-21 15:42:00 UTC: Update 2: Fixed typo in the first of the above two links to our dev server. --martyb]
This is a follow-up to: Changing the Site UI to Making Long Stories Easier to Navigate -- Input Requested.
Wow! Thanks for all the positive feedback to the previous story! I knew the implementation was a bit rough around the edges, so I very much appreciate the positive, constructive feedback that was provided!
Based on your input -- primarily displeasure in having a single button take up a whole physical line -- I have modified the in-memory template on our development server to now provide a textual link in the story header right after the printer icon. It should only appear when viewing the story by itself; there should be no indication of this on the main page.
To repeat, this is only on our development server so far; it is not yest implemented on our production server (i.e. what you see here).
In short, should this get rolled out to production?
- Yes.
- Yes, with these suggested changes.
- No.
Please refer to the previous story (linked above) for test scenarios and reply with any issues you may find!
teamwork++
Related Stories
[20200320_184315 UTC: Update: Made the dept. line longer to better demonstrate space [un]availability.--martyb]
[20200320_202305 UTC: Update: Added topics: "/dev/random", "Code", "Software", and "Answers" topics to better illustrate their use of space in a story. --martyb]
[20200321_175412 UTC: Update: superseded by: Skip to comment(s) -- Second Try --martyb]
First: Please accept my best wishes to everyone during SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 / Coronavirus pandemic. Please take all necessary precautions to keep yourself and those around you safe!
Second: I should not have been surprised, but I must confess my admiration at how the SoylentNews community came together in support of each other in response to SoylentNews Community -- How has SAR-CoV-2 (Coronavirus) / COVID-19 Affected You? As of my writing this, there are over 300 comments! community++ This is what I had hoped for when SoylentNews started over six years (Wow!) ago, and so validates my giving of my time to this site!
Third: (and the focus of this story) our virus roundup stories are... long. An AC posted a comment: thanks to eds:
Thanks editors for pulling together this summary. SN for the win!
One comment--it is kind of long to scroll down through, to get to the comments. Perhaps next time some of the longer stories could be put inside the spoiler tag?"
This was quickly acted on by a member of staff, but that was not universally embraced as a "Good Idea". Both Soylentils, to my eye, had good points. If I am visiting an active story again, I have already read the story (both the "Intro Copy" and the "Extended Copy"). Why should I have to scroll through a wall-of-text to get to the comments? The suggestion of using <spoiler>...</spoiler> to bracket the contents of each of the merged stories seemed like a reasonable suggestion. But, when you have a hammer... Right idea, but maybe not quite the right tool.
Aside: If I am reading a review of, say, a movie, then a spoiler is an appropriate way to hide plot details from those who have not yet seen the movie. That is not the situation here. Why hide details of a story about the pandemic? Hmm. A good first try, perhaps, but it looks like we need something different in this case.
Idea: what if there were, say, a button at the top of the story that I could click and be brought immediately to the comment section of a story? Hey! I can do that!
Acknowledgements: At this point, I hereby express my sincere thanks to AndyTheAbsurd for constructing some CSS which allowed the conditional display of a button, and to FatPhil for his testing efforts. Thanks guys!
Read on past the break for details on the implementation and a request for assistance before I attempt to roll it out to production.
[2020-03-23 01:32:11 UTC Update 1:Ed. Note - updated to clarify location of the skip to comments button.--fnord666]
[2020-03-23 12:56:40 UTC Update 2: Changed link target from "#acomments" to "#commentwrap" per suggestion in: https://soylentnews.org/meta/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=36704&page=1&cid=974278#commentwrap; added "Note-to-self". --martyb]
Thank You! Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on a new UI feature to the site; [Skip to comment(s)]" is now live on SoylentNews!
The SoylentNews' Main Page should function and look the same as before. The magic manifests only after a specific story has been opened. Code has been added to a site template so that "[Skip to comment(s)]" should now appear, right-justified, in the first of the two lines in the title bar that appears immediately below the story's title.
[Note to self: see in-memory version of template: "dispStory;misc;default" original implementation target fragid of "#acomments" changed to "#commentwrap" as of 2020-03-23 12:56:40 UTC--martyb]
Clicking the button will bring you to the comment header block. (That's where you can adjust Breakthrough, Threshold, and Threading preferences (either one-time-only, or save it away, permanently.)
Quite frankly, thanks to the community's feedback, it looks and behaves better than what I had originally envisioned!
Previously:
Changing Site UI to Make Long Stories Easier to Navigate -- Input Requested [superseded; see update]
Skip to comment(s) -- Second Try [Updated: 2020-03-21 15:06:00 UTC].)
Enjoy!
--martyb
(Score: 5, Funny) by zoward on Saturday March 21 2020, @12:38PM (2 children)
Now we don't even have to read the summary to go comment! w00t!
On a more serious note, it's actually kinda useful if you've read the summary, gone to read the article, then came back and want to jump straight to the comments, so I'll vote Yes.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Saturday March 21 2020, @03:09PM
Thanks for the feedback; glad you like it!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday March 21 2020, @04:15PM
Just that the story underneath , I wanted to read the rest and find out what other problems Dino ran into (sniff)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Saturday March 21 2020, @12:50PM (4 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 21 2020, @01:48PM (1 child)
I agree with that suggestion.
If flush-right is not desired or too hard to do, I suggest to insert a small space between the printer button and the skip to comments link (about the same amount as there already is between the date and the printer icon), for purely aesthetic reasons.
Other than that, I think it's great as it is.
Thank you for still listening to the users.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Saturday March 21 2020, @03:24PM
Please see my earlier reply [soylentnews.org], below.
Right-aligned? Check!
Add a space? Not needed!
Great as it is? Yay!
Thank you for still listening to the users. HTH! Thanks for speaking up with constructive suggestions!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Saturday March 21 2020, @03:15PM (1 child)
That was an interesting corner case! There's considerably more happening under the covers than is immediately apparent.
I *think* I have it working.. Take another look at dev and please let me know!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday March 21 2020, @09:37PM
Mostly because of the 'vomit' theme, but your link's pretty cool too.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @01:12PM (8 children)
Because then we can read it in full first time around.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @02:12PM (4 children)
I can't see the button. You should make it bigger and make it flash with bright colors, or perhaps float it under the curser so people can see it.
(Score: 3, Funny) by martyb on Saturday March 21 2020, @04:03PM
"Float it under the curser..." Watch your language! =)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @04:23PM
what button?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 21 2020, @06:54PM
Do that and the curser is all of us.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday March 21 2020, @09:41PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by martyb on Saturday March 21 2020, @03:38PM (2 children)
That sounds like a great idea. A deeper look "under the hood" reveals there would be a whole lot required to implement that.
New field(s) in the database. New code to write the date/time stamp of when it was first read (or even a boolean flag). New code to retrieve it. New code to determine if the section should be shown or not. New code to implement the hide/show. New code to allow override (Yes, I read it a while ago, but I want to read it again now; how to we make that option available?) How to set a preference? Never hide? Hide after first read? Always hide? Hide override>? I'll grant you the logic is not exceedingly difficult. OTOH, it is not as easy as it appears on the surface: there are many corner cases to consider, too.
What I've implemented so far was strictly in an in-memory site template (think: glorified macros). Doing the other stuff would require coding for SQL, Perl, and templates. Further it would require a rebuild and redeployment to get it "live".
For those reasons, and others, I do not foresee it being implemented any time soon.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday March 21 2020, @09:33PM (1 child)
Actually, the way it is now seems just fine. When you go to the main page (currently on https://dev.soylentnews.org [soylentnews.org] ) you see the first part of TFS (assuming there's more) and you don't see the "Skip to comments" button until you actually select the story.
That gives us a chance to see if we even *want* to see the rest of the story or the comments. As such, I think it's just fine as it is.
Good work on this martyb! I take back some of the things I've said about you. :) :) :)
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by martyb on Sunday March 22 2020, @01:47PM
Thanks for noticing! By default, it would have displayed it on the main page; I had to do some extra CSS work to specifically exclude it. Especially since the target of the link ("#acomments") does not even exist on the main page! The target is created only when you actually open the story by itself.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @03:24PM (2 children)
There is nothing there. Tried reloading page, going into and back out of the thread. Are you making font and background the same or single pixal font?
Maybe just make it clear permeate buttons.
Also the link to dev.soylentnews.org is bad
(Score: 2) by martyb on Saturday March 21 2020, @03:57PM (1 child)
Thanks for pointing out the broken link... fixed!
It has not yet been rolled out to production (here), it is currently only implemented on dev. Please give it another try!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @06:13PM
And that is where I tried it. on DEV,SOYLENTNEWS.ORG Why I noted the broken link.
Note: even in the first posting the link was broken. Missing the "Y" in SOTLENTNEWS.
There is nothing there no new link.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 21 2020, @03:30PM (4 children)
Just one thing. You have to be logged in, or it doesn't work. That way, if AC drills all the way down to troll you, you know that AC really loves you long time, Joe!
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by martyb on Saturday March 21 2020, @04:01PM (3 children)
Say what? I just tried it on two different browsers (incognito / private browsing) and it worked fine as an AC for me. Could you please try again and confirm?
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @04:47PM
I believe that was a suggestion for "improved" behavior, not a description of undesired current behavior.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @08:28PM
First tried it logged into the dev server, works fine with the improved link location.
Just logged out of the dev server, clicked on the "Read More..." button under the first story and then the
[Skip to comment(s)]
link appears just fine there too.
Browsing with FF on Win7.
I vote: 1. Yes, and thanks!
And my vote counts twice because I'm the AC that got this all started, so there. I wrote:
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 21 2020, @10:49PM
I can neither confirm nor deny my earlier attempt at smartassery. Someone got the joke though, since I've been modded funny. ;^)
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @04:26PM (4 children)
Text says https://dev.soylentnews.org/ [soylentnews.org] but the link is to https://dev/soylentnews.org/ [pornhub.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by martyb on Saturday March 21 2020, @05:42PM (3 children)
Warning! Parent comment's text is correct, but the offered corrected link actually goes to "http://pornhub.com/"
Geesh! Didn't even use https!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @08:00PM
I believe the OP actually meant to link to http://dev.soylentnews.org/ [goatse.cx]. Is that better? :-)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @08:13PM (1 child)
And now we all know why some forward thinker made links display the host, https://soylentnews.org/ [evil-site.com], and why you should always check them.
And yes, I broke that link on purpose to illustrate the effect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @09:40PM
There's nothing forward thinking about it. I demonstrated the reason in my comment where I set the link test to soylentnews.org but actually linked to goatse.cx. Slashdot started showing link domains almost 20 years ago because trolls would make the link text appear to go to an innocuous site while actually being a goatse.cx link. Worse yet was comp-u-goat.org (I think it was .org), which had a javascript infinite loop to produce goatse.cx popups. I believe there was some audio with it, too. It was very common to disguise links to goatse.cx and other shock sites to trick unsuspecting users into clicking on them. To try to prevent this, Slashdot started showing link domains.
Trolls countered this with some interesting tactics. One was to use redirect pages on other sites, that would redirect to goatse.cx but allow the link to show a different domain. Another was a bait-and-switch redirect, in which the link initially goes to seemingly legitimate content. Once the comment with the link is modded up or a story with the link gets posted, the redirect is changed to goatse.cx. And then there's the tactic of a redirect link that mostly sends users to legitimate content but sends a small percentage of users to goatse.cx. This is particularly useful for trolls because some users will respond and claim that the link is a goatse.cx link while other users will see legitimate content and argue that comments warning of a goatse.cx link are misinformation.
There's nothing forward thinking about it. Domains are displayed because of rampant trolling on Slashdot. It may have actually made if easier for trolls to trick users because, instead of hovering over every link before clicking, they might click if the domain appears safe without looking to see if it's a redirect.
Before some overzealous moderator decides the goatse.cx link in my other comment makes it trollish, that hasn't been a shock site in over a decade. The server that hosted the site is still online, I believe, and the page is actually up. However, the goatse.cx domain no longer redirects to the page because the Christmas Island domain registry revoked the domain. It was intended as a humorous homage to the history of trolls on Slashdot trying to trick users into visiting shock sites.
(Score: 1) by AlwaysNever on Saturday March 21 2020, @04:58PM (4 children)
I didn't know you had posted a second story about this subject, so I replied to your post in the old story with this post, which I repost here for you to see:
---
Hey, I see you have put a "[Skip to comment(s)]" text link in the header, at the right of the print icon in the article header.
That is better than the button you had before, because it takes much less screen real state. I still think a small icon with a downwards pointing arrow would be better, because the text link "[Skip to comment(s)]" consumes reading attention from the user, when the user should focusing instead on pondering if the article Title and Summary are of interest to him, and therefore the user then should not be wasting his reading capability with distracting text about UI.
---
(Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 21 2020, @05:09PM (2 children)
Since it is the same in every story, you'll soon no longer consciously notice it. However for anyone who encounters it for the first time, the meaning of the arrow would not be clear.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by AlwaysNever on Saturday March 21 2020, @05:37PM (1 child)
The mistery of the meaning of the arrow could easily be solved if the arrow icon has a whatever-it-is-called on-hovering yellow tip explaining what it does, and also by plain old bravery of just clicking on it and see what happens.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Sunday March 22 2020, @04:07PM
I would offer some reading material:
The last of them makes for an excellent starting point. Back when the dot com boom was getting started, I was fortunate to work at a company that brought Jakob Nielsen [nngroup.com] in to give a seminar on good web design. That page is one of many there which provide recommendations on good designed based on actual test results in the real world.
Maybe, just maybe, if it needs explaining, it is not intuitive.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Sunday March 22 2020, @03:20AM
I sense you are unaware of just how much is involved in implementing your suggestion.
What I have done so far is temporary. It would disappear if the site crashed and was restarted. But, since the change is restricted to a single template, I can (and have) retained a copy of it as a local filer that be easily restored. Separately, there is the matter of getting this change into the formal build process. Again, because it is localized to a single template file, it should be relatively easy to add it to the build system. Note: That is not in my skillset, nor, for that matter, do I have the privs to do so; would require my making a pull request and The Mighty Buzzard merging it into the site code. Even then, I know in a gemeral way what needs to be done, but as they say, the devil is in the details.
Adding an icon in another level of complexity. First, you DO NOT want me making the icon; my artistic skills are on a par with a crayon-wielding, five-year-old child. Then the icon is a separate file which must be put in a "known location"; said file must also be merged into the build process. Attendant to that, the icon needs to be correctly referenced in the template. Oh and that helpful alternate text which was suggested needs to be written and added. There's more, but that should give a taste of what is required. And for what benefit? Perhaps in the long run we may choose to do this, I am not entirely dismissing the possibility.
On the other hand, I had the great fortune to be attend a course on human factors and good web design given by Dr. Jakob Nielson [nngroup.com]. His article on Ten Usability Heuristics [nngroup.com] just scratches the surface. He actually investigates different designs and measures how effective they are in helping or hindering people. By comparison, there are loads of people who employ less-than-ideal practices for web design. Has not been updated in a while, but Web Pages that Suck [webpagesthatsuck.com] is a classic collection of things to NOT DO on your web site! See, too, Mystery Meat Navigation [wikipedia.org]. And, for an example of how bad things can get (and maybe a good laugh at how absolutely garish it is, I offer the considerably toned-down: https://www.lingscars.com/ [lingscars.com].
So, my whole point is that if there were a sufficient demand for it by the community, it *could* be done. OTOH, there are so many other things that need doing on this site, that I do not foresee your suggestion gaining much attention for a while. Let's run with the text only for a while as an experiment. We can revisit this in a month or two, or whenever TMB finishes his home remodeling.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @10:31PM
Thanks. No JS, no guessing the meaning of a picture. Just works.