Slashdot Keybindings, Dynamic Stories

We've been working hard on the new dynamic Slashdot project (logged in users can enable this by enabling the beta index in their user preferences). I just wanted to quickly mention that there are keybindings on the index. The WASD and VI movement keys do stuff that we like, and the faq has the complete list. Also, if you are using Firefox or have Index2 beta enabled, you can click 'More' in the footer at the end of the page to load the next block of stories in-line without a page refresh. We're experimenting now with page sizes to balance load times against the likelihood that you'll click. More features will be coming soon, but the main thing on our agenda now is optimization. The beta index2 is sloooow and that's gotta change. We're aiming for 2 major optimizations this week (CSS Sprites, and removing an old YUI library) that I'm hoping will put the beta page render time into the "Sane" time frame (which, in case you are wondering, is several seconds faster than that "Insane" time frame we're currently seeing).

Sane/Insane referring to pages or posts loading?

[Shadow of Eternity (795165)]

Because I'd personally be more tolerant of pages taking a few seconds longer to load everyone's comments up than the usually 5-30 second delay on previewing and submitting my own comments.

Re:Sane/Insane referring to pages or posts loading

[Swizec (978239)]

Agreed. WHY does it take so long for my preview to load? Sure I can understand taking a while for comments to appear on the static page, but when I click Preview I want to see the fucking preview instead of wondering if some javascript somewhere crashed and nothing's about to happen.

Edit: you vile bastards, you've changed the delay on purpose while I was typing that first paragraph didn't you!?

Re:

[BrokenHalo (565198)]

Agreed. WHY does it take so long for my preview to load?

Indeed. Why does it take so long for EVERYTHING to load?

My solution is simple: go into your preferences and enable "classic" mode. Aaaah, relief. No more cruft and bloat.

Re:

[fbjon (692006)]

Haha, you just figured it out without knowing it!

In my experience, it only takes long for the preview to load the first time. After that, it's instant as expected. My guess is that it has something to do with the ping-back thing I've heard of that checks if your post is coming from a shady place.

Re:Sane/Insane referring to pages or posts loading

[caluml (551744)]

Agreed. WHY does it take so long for my preview to load?

Because they're portscanning the IP you're coming from. Set it to REJECT rather than DROP from Slashdot's IP/range, and you'll find it almost instant. It's pretty annoying though for those of use who've been posting for years (yeah, I know my ID isn't low - I had one that was, but stopped posting for a while, and forgot it :( ).

Re:Sane/Insane referring to pages or posts loading

[Shadow of Eternity (795165)]

Which is even more easily translatable to "It's less disruptive for a page to load comments over time while I'm reading through them than it is for me to need to wait a minute or two just on previewing/submitting something I've already typed".

Re:Sane/Insane referring to pages or posts loading

[Zero__Kelvin (151819)]

"Which is easily translatable to "I'm more interested in speaking than reading what other people might have to say on the issue"."

Which is easily further translatable again to: I have a Slashdot account .

To be fair, if the guy has a clue, he would be more interesting in posting than reading, and he would be right to have the preference. For example, take your post. You missed major computing concepts like batch processing and time slices. The guy just wants one big time slice to load large amounts of data, and one small time slice to post small amounts of data. This is called intelligent system design.

How much should he be interested in reading your post? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader(s).

phew

[ChienAndalu (1293930)]

lucky the beta index isn't linked in the summary, otherwise it would already be slashdotted

Special button

[Spatial (1235392)]

What about a button that causes Kdawson to be kicked in the crotch? You can call it 'Kickdot', as a sleight against the size of his man-spheres.

Show a counter next to it, it'll be great. It'll be the first virtual button ever to get worn out from overuse.

Re:Special button

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

Hey, at least blocking kdawson from the front page works again now. For a few painful months, it didn't work with index2.pl and there was no way of switching back to the original. Fortunately, now you can block idle and kdawson from the front page.

Re:

[JCSoRocks (1142053)]

Now why would you go and point that out? You know it's only a matter of time before they "fix" that now. Enjoy it while it lasts!

lynx

[Gothmolly (148874)]

Just don't break Lynx support.

Re:

[Nimey (114278)]

Slashdot has been looking a lot better on Lynx lately, and it renders well on ELinks as well.

I don't use those browsers much anymore, but in the early '00s I used lynx + zgv to view web comics, images, etc., and it worked quite well indeed. I don't think svgalib is well-supported anymore, though.

Does anyone know of a console-mode image viewer that works on modern systems? It'd be neat to be able to do that again.

Re:

[Yaur (1069446)]

There is nothing wrong with AJAX/Web 2.0 stuff, but Slashdot seems to have completely missed the point in its implementation. If done right it should improve the user experience, but here it mostly doesn't.

Re:My lawn

[Gothmolly (148874)]

Nothing wrong, except where it adds no value. I want a list of articles, grouped by category, that I can browse, then hit either a link to the article, or the comments.

I don't need tags, AJAX, redraws w/o page loads, blah blah blah.

There was nothing wrong with good old 'rn'.

Re:

[jc42 (318812)]

There is nothing wrong with AJAX/Web 2.0 stuff, but Slashdot seems to have completely missed the point in its implementation.

But the ability to do that is the main thing that's wrong with AJAX (and JavaScript and ...). What's wrong is that these things allow the web page to override the browser's basic behavior, so the user get surprising (and usually incomprehensible) results when they hit keys. It's especially wrong to break things like the Back button or the space bar or the pg up/dn keys. This effect

Stop auto-updating?

[Smitty825 (114634)]

One (small) issue I seem to have is with the auto-updating feature. Often, I'm connected over a (relatively) slow cell phone link. When I'm using this slow link, I'd prefer to not have Slashdot query the server for updated stories. I know I can press the "pause" button, at the top to stop the auto-updating, but if I forget to do so, then I'm annoyed by some other app responding slowly. Is there plans to make this feature configurable? (Note: Each time I load /., I need to remember to hit the "pause" button...the previous state is never saved)

The Beta Index is horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

The beta page is a perfect example of why I hate the new slashdot features. There are buttons all over the place with randomly coloured backgrounds and the like; it's awful. I hope none of it gets live.

Re:The Beta Index is horrible

[bonch (38532)]

I hate loading content without refresh. This is becoming standard on too many websites. IT BREAKS THE BEHAVIOR OF THE BACK BUTTON. Such use of JavaScript should be reserved for minor interface interactions, like saving settings or opening a login prompt.

It's getting really annoying how, after decades of desktop API development and interface conventions, the web has come along and not only required everyone to reinvent APIs for every website, but custom interface behaviors as well. It's like we're back to MS-DOS programs when it was every man for himself.

There's my cranky rant for the day.

UI plea

[drDugan (219551)]

Would you hire a great UI designer and make a brand new layout or skin that is easier to read and navigate?

... really love reading the content on ./ - but can't stand the design.

I have my preferences pared back to skeletal for readability - but makes the site look painfully ugly

WASD customization

[XanC (644172)]

What about people on non-QWERTY keyboards? Can you create a user option for what key does what?

Re:WASD customization

[langelgjm (860756)]

Why is this modded funny? I use Dvorak, and I'm sure there are plenty of other /.ers who do, too.

Then there are the people using foreign language layout - AZERTY, etc.

Re:WASD customization

[chubs730 (1095151)]

Red Five standing by.

Feature request --

[girlintraining (1395911)]

Please fix the user pages. The new way of doing it where our comments are buried several clicks in is irritating. The only reason most of us go to our own user pages is to see if anyone's replied to our comment.

Re:Feature request --

[Hatta (162192)]

I emailed Malda about this when it was first implemented, here's
what he said:

The feed should contain stories you've tagged. The idea is that this
is a place where you can share content you like with others.. so if I
go to ~hatta I see the slashdot YOU think I should see. But you're
right in that your comments should be in that page as well. There's
technical reasons that they aren't, but we're going to try to fix
them.

Doesn't make any sense to me though. I've always considered my user page to be for my own benefit, not others. Slashdot isn't myspace. I never read anyone else's user page, and I doubt anyone reads mine. But there you have it. His solution for people like us? Bookmark slashdot.org/~username/comments.

Re:Feature request --

[harry666t (1062422)]

Try:

http://slashdot.org/users.pl

http://slashdot.org/users.pl?nick=harry666t

http://slashdot.org/users.pl?uid=1337

Dear /. staff,

please don't take the good old users.pl away.

Re:

[shutdown -p now (807394)]

I never read anyone else's user page, and I doubt anyone reads mine.

I do read other people's user pages when I want to look at their... that's right, comment history.

I certainly don't care about what stories they've tagged. Why should I?

Re:

[pjt33 (739471)]

Exactly. When someone posts something really good I check to see whether they consistently make good posts, and if so I add them to my friends list.

Re:Feature request --

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

Why not just set it to send you a message when someone replies to one of your comments? That way, the front page tells you how many new messages you have. That said, it would be great if:

1. You could jump directly to the page with the reply from the messages list page, rather than having to go via the message page.
2. Messages indicating replies to the same post could be grouped.
3. The messages system actually let you send messages to other Slashdot readers, so you didn't have to post your email address in a discussion you wanted to take offline.

Re:

[girlintraining (1395911)]

Why not just set it to send you a message when someone replies to one of your comments?

Other than the fact that the feature doesn't work? No reason.

GreaseMonkey hack to fix user pages

[PCM2 (4486)]

A while back I wrote a GreaseMonkey script [neilmcallister.com] to switch the User page back to the old behavior. With this script installed, when you click on your username you go immediately to the comments list, like how it used to work. Try it out and send me feedback if it works/doesn't work for you.

BTW, IMHO this whole effort to "modernize Slashdot" has been a total disaster. I have all the new Indexes turned off, but the UI is still much worse than it was before they started playing around with it. The old layout plus th

javascript

[Speare (84249)]

If I load the front page, all the content appears nearly instantly. Then the whole world freezes for about two seconds before the new bright green search button appears next to the search field. I can't scroll or do anything with the page until the godawful javascript decides to finish whatever it wants to do. True for my versions of Camino and Firefox. Just because Chrome has some fancy-dancy new speedup for JS doesn't mean we all have that browser, nor should we fill up pages with new heavy features with little benefit to users.

Bring back meta!

[clang_jangle (975789)]

While you're working on the site, will you please fix meta-mod so we're *actually* modding the mods? I can't see that the current meta-mod does anything whatsoever. It doesn't mod mods, and it doesn't mod comments either. Just + or - for no particular reason, not used for anything at all. Reminds me of voting in US elections...

Turning it off.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak (773371)]

I'm not fond of the new beta index or the new user page system. Can they be turned off?

C-X C-preview

[enHatt (1283014)]

So, when are the emacs keybindings up and running?

worksforme

[daemonburrito (1026186)]

D2 and the beta index are working great for me, aside from the hiccup with the comments pane a couple of days ago.

I would like to see meta-moderation revisited, as this is the only way to mitigate coordinated group mods. Since the old mm system was dropped, I've seen an uptick in bizarre moderation.

I know my karma is going to take a hit for this, but I had to say it. Taco, you're doing a fine job. KDawson, I don't hate you. We understand why you have to do Idle. All in all, Slashdot is pretty great.

Rainbow wtf?

[Bazman (4849)]

What's with the rainbow colours? Each story has a little flash of colour on it, and then top right there's a dropdown with some colours on it, and if I choose a colour the stories all seem to dance about a bit and shuffle around. What. The. Flip? And then on the top left there's an 'Edit' box which has - amongst it's other unexplained options - another colour selector. Which does what? I have no idea. Is it some kind of quality thing? I don't have a map of quality to colour in my head. This is meaningless. And don't try and explain what it all means - I'm trying to read the news here, I don't want to have to read a manual. I'll go elsewhere.

And what do colour-blind people think? At least if you are playing with colour be smart and use Color Brewer palettes.

Honestly, I think slashdot looked pretty good enough in 2002:

http://web.archive.org/web/20020806091841/slashdot.org/ [archive.org]

  - go back to that, change the fonts and colours a bit, perfect.

Another recent example of a design-gone-bad - www.freshmeat.net - is the current new implementation:

  http://www.freshmeat.net/ [freshmeat.net]

  really better in terms of ease of use than 2002?

http://web.archive.org/web/20020603034258/http://freshmeat.net/ [archive.org]

Raaaaage!

B

Re:

[Kozz (7764)]

Yeah, at least some friggin' tooltips on buttons/images etc would be helpful. And for the love of pete, wtf is "daddypants"?

Re:

[Inda (580031)]

I see the majority of posts say the same thing: we liked the old Slashdot better.

Is that a vocal majority, the majority of users with mod points, or the actual majority?

Mark Stories as read?

[CopaceticOpus (965603)]

Sometimes, I won't read /. for a couple of days. Then I'll bring up the site and start reading through stories. After I've read (or scanned over) several stories, I might need to go do something else, and so I close the page.

Now a few hours later, I come back. There are a few new stories I haven't seen, followed by a big chunk I have seen, followed by another chunk I haven't seen, going back to whatever story I read last two days ago. Trying to figure out my place is a pain.

I'd love to see a personalized index in which I check off stories as read, and they disappear. If I close the page and come back later, only those stories not marked as read would be listed.

I know you can do something like this with an RSS reader, such as Google Reader. But I really prefer to read stories directly on Slashdot.

Re:

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

On some computers there is, and on some other computers there is not, a flashy green thing on the top right that has the text "green" in it. What is this?

A browser bug? Firefox extension? I don't see these.

Articles get tags. What decides which of the *many* tags that people probably give to it, appear on the front page below the article?

Seems to be the most popular n tags. I have no idea what the value of n is.

Sometimes there are tags that are so strange that I can't imagine multiple people would by chance pick that same tag, how comes it that those get picked by so many people anyway?

Tag spamming. Watch for comments that say "tag this article mrsuffleuffogus". Sometimes others will comply. In addition, some people, like this guy [slashdot.org] have sock puppet accounts. Also, I've seen /.ers collaborating on IRC/Twitter/etc. to get articles tagged a certain way or to attack a particular user.

Re:

[Chlorine Trifluoride (1517149)]

The story tag is to distinguish stories from submissions and comments.

Re:Slashdot looks weird

[ScuttleMonkey (55)]

The story tag is to distinguish stories from submissions and comments.

Among other datatypes. The firehose is our content delivery tool and pretty much any page is just becoming a filter on the firehose to display whatever data you are asking for. This allows us to do a lot of really cool things (both now and in the near future) and get some performance hits back soon.

Re:Slashdot looks weird

[ivan256 (17499)]

I don't think the original poster correctly framed the spirit of his question....

Why doesn't the front page filter out the display of the 'story' tag?

(Can't help but stick this in here: Why did the horrendously buggy and unusable new default user page go live? A lot of the stuff on there just seems random. Is the number in the speech bubble at the top the number of total comments in the thread the user last posted in? Why? Why the terrible CSS for the top item? Why are the comment titles formatted differently there than everywhere else? Why the redundant 'comments' slashbox on the right with the same content as the left half of the page? Why remove the menus that are on the right side of every other page on the site?)

Re:Slashdot looks weird

[ScuttleMonkey (55)]

Yes, it has been a painful migration. However, a complete rewrite of the FAQ is coming soon (with context-appropriate linkage from the rest of the site) along with a much more intuitive interface that allows for easier firehose use. You have already seen the very tip of the iceberg with this post by Rob, expect to many more things like this making the site easier to decode.

I know it hasn't been easy, but hang in there. Slashteam has some really cool stuff on the way.

Re:Slashdot looks weird

[ScuttleMonkey (55)]

well, then among the many "cool" updates on the way you will appreciate the work that is currently being expended to make low-bandwidth, small screen, iphone, etc, interfaces much less buggy and faster-loading. :)

Re:Slashdot looks weird

[Red Flayer (890720)]

well, then among the many "cool" updates on the way you will appreciate the work that is currently being expended to make low-bandwidth, small screen, iphone, etc, interfaces much less buggy and faster-loading. :)

Not to be cynical/snarky, but is there an expected timeline for this?

I mean, it's not that I don't appreciate the work expended, but I'd appreciate the finished product much more :)

Even a tentative schedule (while probably a bad idea to commit to showing to users) posted somewhere might give us a better idea of where we're heading on slashdot, and why we have to put up with so many strange UI tweaks (like most of us, I prefer to stick with what I know).

Re:

[Hatta (162192)]

For that matter, wouldn't it be more in line with the spirit of the site to use HJKL for navigation?

Mod parent up - this is slashdot.

[argent (18001)]

This is "news for nerds", not "I can't believe it's not gmail".

I had set my Slashdot options tuned down until I had a nice clean low-graphics high-content interface with a minimum of surprising keystroke stealing. Every update to Slashdot has made it mankier and flakier. How about a Slashdot lite classic mode that backs things up to about 2002 or so?

Re:

[Yvan256 (722131)]

Indeed, not using UTF-8 is one of the things that annoy me the most about Slashdot. For a website that's supposed to be run by nerds, it's just shameful.