Achievements and Optimizations 294
Ok, Optimizations. These really only affect the Index2 beta users and Firefox users. You should really be in one of these 2 groups.
- CSS Sprites: Vlad combined a number of our chrome images. Vroom used the same technique to combine our top 25 topic icons into a single image. The top 25 icons appear on 60% of our stories, and the chrome images appear on every page load. These 2 changes dropped perhaps 20 requests from a typical fresh page load. That should be a measurable performance increase for a lot of people.
- Library Purge: Scott removed the last remnants of the YUI library. This was THE library to use for AJAX a few years ago, but as of now, we have totally ported to jQuery. The last 2 bits that used YUI were some animation bits, and the discussion2 threshold changing floating widget thing. Porting those 2 things to jQuery let us pull several hundred k of JS from our includes. This let us trim another 85k from our compressed JS transfers. We've cut the JS included on Slashdot in half in the last month.
- Varnish: Jamie installed varnish as a reverse proxy behind the F5 but before our apache. Really this won't be a significant performance improvement for now. We use a complex system of static pages to cache the most read content on the site, but varnish will at last let us deprecate that ancient system for something much simpler. We'll be experimenting with this more over the week, but the only real change for most cases is that most of our static content can be served w/o the latency of NFS. Not a big deal really, but it's something. But when we purge out the old caching system, a lot of things will be a lot easier to maintain and debug.
- CDN: We're probably going to test a CDN this week. The performance gains will be minor, but it will let us move 50 megabits of traffic off our main router and distribute that globally. It sure won't hurt.
A note on Achievements. We launched this as an april fools day joke. We're glad many of you got it. We had great fun with it. But achievements are actually a real, working system. And they serve a purpose. Most of the major bits of functionality on Slashdot have a corresponding achievement. Posting a Journal? Getting a Story Accepted? Being Moderated Up? Using all of your Mod Points up? While many achievements are silly jokes: getting the first block of achievements is essentially a tutorial. And getting some of the more complicated achievements would be a useful indicator for a quality contributor to the site. The heavy lifting on this was done by Chris Brown.
We're also experimenting with a thing we call 'Auto-More'. When you get to the end of the page, a second block of articles will be added to your index. The cool thing is that this means we can serve a smaller selection of stories on the main page request. Since 2/3rds of you never read past story #6, that means that you will get your page a little faster. But 10% or so of you get to the bottom of the page. And you will transparently be given more content. We're doing a bunch of logs to see if this works out. It's just an experiment tho, we may kill it if there is a problem. I think it will eventually be connected to the pause/play function available to logged in Index2 users.
This week we intend to start rolling out the Index2 beta to a very small number of firefox users. A good number of you won't notice. Some of you will tho. You won't hurt our feelings by disabling the thing immediately but I hope you give it a shot. It's great on Firefox. It has a few bugs on Safari. It will work on Chrome as soon as Google gets a Mac port out (Hint hint!). As for IE... well, you'll keep the old system for a few more weeks, but you're only like 14% of our users, and you keep shrinking.
Ok, back to work. You too.
But does it improve story quality? (Score:4, Interesting)
How about employing someone to proof-read your posts and check the links?
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Funny)
Either that or they need to create some way for readers to weigh in on what should make it to the main pages.
Oh well, we can only wish.
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
create some way for readers to weigh in
Like the Firehose [slashdot.org]?
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Funny)
Firehose?!? I know what that means and I have no time for you GNAA trolls!
Anyhow, I am still trying to figure out what the Green/Black thing means.
Is anyone else seeing +/- on all the story headers?
I think they really should just go with the GGP suggestion and fire those guys.
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:4, Interesting)
Which brings me to my point. "Fire" kdawson.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I suspect we are in need of at least two "Whoooosh!"'s here.
Humor is so hard to detect in text...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Humor is so hard to detect in text
Yea, I know what you mean.
I often wish Slashdot had some way to tip me off if other people spotted humor in a post.
-
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Firehose lets us all know just how bad the Slashdot story submission poll really is. There is a lot of tripe in there; ads, dupes, polemicals, rotten formatting, dupes, enormous submissions, just plain boring stories and more dupes.
The issue of story selection is a deep and chronic one at Slashdot. Essentially, the root of the problem is that there is no real incentive to post a good submission, and more incentive to simply post a swathe of low quality submissions instead. I and many other submitters have spent considerable time an effort on compiling and editing submissions, only to have them rejected within minutes, while dupes were chosen instead.
Now, when you submit you have to accept that your story may not be posted. But when quality submissions are getting lost amid the deluge, it's easy to see how good potential submitters can become disheartened and will simply stop submitting good stories. By contrast, the shotgun submitter who spends less time on each submission, but submits more submissions in total, will be more likely to have a story posted and will continue submitting. The end result is the current, appalling state of the firehose. Admittedly the front page has improved in recent times, but the firehose is as bad as ever.
The best way to solve this problem is to give submitters a karma system. This would allow the system to distinguish between submitters who write good stories that didn't make it, and submitters who just wrote tripe. A meta moderation system for submissions would go a long way to improving the submission box and hence the front page.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This can NOT be good....
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Funny)
To improve story quality they just need to get rid of kdawson and ScuttleMonkey.
Meh. The kdawson script is just ScuttleMonkey v2. Obviously, not only did they not get rid of all the bugs, but they introduced a bunch of new ones. Hey Taco, I think you should name ScuttleMonkey v3 "RickJames". That way if anyone complains, you can have an automated response that just says, "I'm RickJames, bitch!" No one can argue with that.
In any case, those are the only two that I know are computer programs. There's no way to tell how many other /. editors are scripts. Call me paranoid, but I wonder sometimes if Slashdot as a whole isn't a ploy by the machines to waste humanity's time while they plan their attack. You thought Caprica Six planted a virus in the Colonial defense system? Nope. She just installed Slashdot on the defense network and waited. Once everyone was busy arguing about the latest kdawson dupe the Cylons attacked.
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with blocking kdawson is that you lose all the stories that are posted by kdawson. We don't want to get rid of the content, we just want to get rid of the editor.
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Funny)
get rid of kdawson and ScuttleMonkey
Now that would be an Achievement worth going for!
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:4, Interesting)
tries to write a word/post in Japanese or any other non-English language.
I think the point is that the site wants to remain in English. There's always slashdot.jp if you want to pretend that you know Japanese.
I do admit that having a submission filter fix the most common copy/paste issues (ellipses, em dashes, curved quotes, etc) should be high on the wishlist for slashdot.
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Interesting)
"The summary isn't quite correct, because the article says '<foreign language>', which actually translates to something like '<english translation>'"
Slashdot then totally mangles the quote they took out of the article and displays it in random ASCII characters. Is it something that's totally necessary for the site to have? No, but it's 2009, sites should be able to deal with more than ASCII. I certainly think it would have been a better use of developer time than achievements.
Suggested Achievement (Score:5, Funny)
Foreigner - posted a comment with Unicode characters
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think currency symbols and other Unicode often thrown about in geeky discussions like ^2 would be nice
â euro
£ pound
 squared
 cubed
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Informative)
Know your entities [w3schools.com]:
For some reason though ² nor ² work for squared, as doesn't ³ or ³ for cubed.
Other supported named entities: ¥ ¦ © ® ± ¼ ½ ¾ × ÷ À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö Ø Ù Ú Û Ü Ý ß à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ö ø ù ú û ü ý ÿ.
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Informative)
Really, entities are a hack. You should be able to enter the characters directly. Here's what happens when I try:
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Funny)
Or is there some new rule in English that under no circumstances can a non-English character appear in English text?
¥€$, åb$ø¦û±€|ý.
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:4, Informative)
In general, sure. But suppose you need to mention that "A MÃÃse once bit my sister". This needs to be fixed.
Use ø: A Møøse once bit my sister.
Backwards text (2:erocS) (Score:5, Interesting)
How about adding Unicode support so that posts aren't often filled with random garbage when commenters assume one of the major technical sites on the internet should be able to handle curved quotation marks.
They tried that once before. But some idiots found some Unicode characters that could be used to reverse the display of Slashdot and spoof scores. See my previous post on this topic [slashdot.org]
Re:Backwards text (2:erocS) (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Backwards text (2:erocS) (Score:5, Funny)
It would be so much easier if the Unicode folks had thought to classify all their characters for us, so we could tell at a glance what was a printable character and what was a control character that might do undesirable things. They could have stuck all that information in some kind of Character Database. Then, I dunno, maybe the Perl folks would have been able to figure out some way of making that information available to programmers, possibly even as a straightforward extension to regular expression syntax. Then it might have been feasible to extend Slash so it supported more characters safely!
Ah, who am I kidding.
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Informative)
Perl supports Unicode just fine. It is Slashcode [sourceforge.net] itself that is stripping out anything that isn't the Queens ASCII. If I could hazard a guess as to why, it would be some kind of cheap way to prevent XSS attacks or page-widening posts. Dunno
Re:But does it improve story quality? (Score:5, Funny)
How about employing someone to proof-read your posts and check the links?
Are you serious? The lack of proof-read is what makes this place Slashdot! ;-)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How about employing someone to proof-read your posts and check the links?
Hey, don't be so hard on them. Taco made it almost two whole words into this story without a typo. ("This weeks code refresh..." should be "This week's code refresh...")
Hope (Score:5, Funny)
Let's just hope these new optimizations don't href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/5105
Re:Hope (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No! It will only make sense to those who <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/5105!!! Get it right people! *hmph*
Re:Hope (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, the birth of a meme. It's much like childbirth, only retarded.
Not clear on all achievements (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not clear on all achievements (Score:5, Funny)
no life
now... (Score:2)
achievements system (Score:5, Funny)
The heavy lifting on this was done by Chris Brown.
I don't care if he can code, any man that would hit a woman is no man at all. You don't deserve Rihanna, you piece of shit, and if I ever catch you out on the street without your bodyguards - your ass is grass my friend.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:achievements system (Score:4, Funny)
Well I liked him as that zebra in Madagascar.
Sleeker is better (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we would all benefit much more from a streamlined site, rather than the feature creep we're seeing at the moment. Slashdot isn't much broken, so don't much fix it.
Re:Sleeker is better (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd argue it is broken, but because they're changing things.
I don't know about you, but I get really high CPU utilization with the fancy new system. By contrast, the old system's only real flaw was that the page system was broken (you'd have to click on page 5 to get page 2), but straight HTML spit out by a server-side CGI script was about the fastest way you could possibly display the insane amount of information on a slashdot comments page quickly.
Re:Sleeker is better (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely. The cute bells and whistles are sometimes fun, and occasionally useful, but they are NOT why I come here. I come here for the news and the conversation. It's rather like a coffeehouse or neighbourhood bar -- you go there to relax. You don't want to be forced to dress up in a power suit just to have a beer with your friends.
My internet machine is a P3 (albeit with gobs of RAM). It struggles with the full display, even in "low bandwidth" mode (on broadband). It takes 20-30 seconds for any page (even "small" ones) to download and render in Mozilla.
Aside from the fact that the whole bloody look is hard on my aging eyes (with no way to get it to be "restfully readable"), this is one reason I still use antique Netscape 3 here -- it doesn't do CSS or JS, so all I see is plain text, rendered almost instantly.
If the site's "improvements" ever get to where I can't use NS3 to read and post, I'll have to give up Slashdot -- it simply won't be worth the time or the eyestrain if I have to read it in "normal" mode.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Elinks? Another descendant of Lynx? this one? http://elinks.or.cz/ [elinks.or.cz] Thanks, I'll have to try it, next time I have a non-Windows system up (I don't see a build for Windows, and I gather it's not available as a binary??) The screenshots remind me of some of the old DOS-based graphical browsers, which were a good start but never really got to where they were useful to me. This looks more mature.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Add a mobile page which autodetects. I don't want to have to set something in my settings to get it to come up like that when I only read from my mobile page once or twice a day. It's a real fucking pain in the ass to wait 45 to 60 seconds for the page to come up because there is so much shit being loaded.
Tons of other sites have auto-mobile support. Why not a tech site like Slashdot?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The Web Developer Toolbar allows you to easily enable and disable things like CSS and images, along with many other handy tools.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
this is one reason I still use antique Netscape 3 here -- it doesn't do CSS or JS, so all I see is plain text, rendered almost instantly.
In firefox:
View -> Page Style -> No Style
Probably you can do this automatically with greasemonkey or something. Noscript will disable all javascript, or only js you want.
My internet machine is a P3 (albeit with gobs of RAM) ... If the site's "improvements" ever get to where I can't use NS3 to read and post, I'll have to give up Slashdot -- it simply won't be worth the time or the eyestrain
'Here's a nickel kid. Get yourself a better computer.' Also, nobody else can read Idle stories either...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope, I really do still use NS3 as my primary browser, for any site that degrades gracefully and isn't afflicted with JS menus. (I also have image loading turned off, an old habit from the mid-1990s and very slow dialup, but even on broadband I've discovered that I really prefer NOT to be bothered with images most of the time. NS3 handles this well; Mozilla does not.)
NS3 renders CSS sites pretty much as plain text. This makes many sites FAR easier to read, as all the "busy" shit goes away (and probably beca
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"made Slashdot a non-destination for me for a while now."
Re:Sleeker is better (Score:5, Funny)
After all:
In my country, they speak of a man so virile, so potent, that to spend a night with such a man is to enter a world of sensual delights most women dare not dream of. This man is known as "the comedian."
Re:Sleeker is better (Score:5, Insightful)
Achievements strike me as yet another penis-measuring tool, rather than as something that brings more value to the site.
Well, at bare minimum they should thus bring penis to the site. Er, wait, slashdot is quite the sausage party already. Actually, I have a theory that there are actually quite a few females lurking, but they don't talk because they know we wouldn't appreciate it anyway. There are of course a few regular female contributors, but if I were them I wouldn't bother - you could be deluged with sexist bullshit anywhere. The difference is that most people are even dumber than the average slashdotter and have less excuse for thinking that crap is funny.
Achievements are harmless. They don't even do anything! As long as there are no achievements based on things like first posts or negative moderation, the achievement system is unlikely to actually harm anyone. It's only when it rewards bad behavior (e.g. by allowing a negative score - thus users could compete for maximum absolute value) that it becomes dangerous.
I forget, (Score:5, Funny)
Test CDN? (Score:3, Informative)
Achievements (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there a list of who has the most achievements? Maybe Slashdot should award titles depending upon how many achievements you have.
Flair? (Score:5, Funny)
IPv6? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IPv6? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, as an achievement. Sadly even then, only 0.001% of us will ever see it.
Erm...excuse me! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's great on Firefox. It has a few bugs on Safari. It will work on Chrome as soon as Google gets a Mac port out (Hint hint!). As for IE... well, you'll keep the old system for a few more weeks, but you're only like 14% of our users, and you keep shrinking.
Er...havn't you forgotten something. A lot of us are Sooo nerdy we use Opera [opera.com]
Re:Erm...excuse me! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Erm...excuse me! (Score:5, Funny)
Opera readers will simply build an inline proxy that pre-reads the page, corrects any errors, add missing alignment attributes and then optimize the resulting code before passing it on to the user.
... which will be available as a Firefox Add-on eight months later and built into the monolith that will be known as IE 10. Firefox users (myself included) will believe and argue that FF invented this feature.
IE at 14%? (Score:5, Interesting)
IE usage down to 14% seems like a major story, even for a tech heavy site like Slashdot. It would be interesting to see trends of browsers on /. over time. And maybe even OS stats?
btw, Taco, I use noscript to turn off the Javascript on /., mostly because Firefox 2 on my Solaris machine is just too slow (and there's really no hope of getting Firefox 3 working -- I'd have to compile half of Gnome in library upgrades). I can accept some of the UI weirdness (like the gray triangle on top of every story on the main page), but I hope you don't make Javascript a requirement for viewing /. That would be painful!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is only down to 14% on this website because this website doesn't function on any version of IE. If you try to do anything using IE, you'll quickly realize they don't test using it and you have to switch browsers. In otherwords, no it is not a major story beyond "Slashdot is a Firefox-only website"
Funny that. They should put an animated "Best viewed with Netscape" at the bottom of the page. I thought that attitude went out with Firefox.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And yet despite your claim of it not working at all in any version of IE, I was able to post this comment in IE6. Strange, eh?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But if Taco and friends think raising the barrier to entry on their site is a good idea....
Last time I checked, they were not your bitch, ya know? ;)
I learned in five painful years, what obeying every wish of your users results in.
Commercial companies often try to make their products simpler, so the stupidest user can use them.
Which results in them getting more stupid people on average.
Which results in there being an even lower end in that Gaussian curve.
Which results in some users still complaining and having problems.
Which results in the companies dumbing products even more down.
Until they beco
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Last time you heard, the site probably worked correctly on IE. Now it doesn't at all, unless you turn on the "old" commenting system. (And even then the User page is all screwy.)
There's not a lot of significance in reporting that a site that doesn't work in IE isn't used by IE.
Bring back the old user page! (Score:5, Insightful)
The new user page is ugly and less useful than the old one. It takes information that used to be on the main user page and makes me click on a second link in order to see it.
I respect that website maintainers like to add new shiny things to the website every once in a while, but for God's sake, don't take away functionality in the process.
Re:Bring back the old user page! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose, until they decide to retire that page. Also, I would like to get a useful page when I click on my name at the top of the page rather than having to type in the address bar or navigate my bookmarks. Also, I prefer the role of the grumpy curmudgeon, and using an alternative user page rather than bitching about the current one is not in keeping with that role.
Spoofing Firefox (Score:3, Funny)
I've got a reputation as a nerd to uphold, after all.
correlation something something causation (Score:4, Insightful)
As for IE... well, you'll keep the old system for a few more weeks, but you're only like 14% of our users, and you keep shrinking.
Ah, yes. The old "if it hurts, then just stop doing it" treatment. Of course the number of IE users keeps shrinking, as they find that this site doesn't work with their browser of choice!
As an Opera user I'm still using the old-school no-beta, no-beta2 version of Slashdot, and I sincerely hope the day will never come that I have to choose between Opera and Slashdot.
14% (Score:2)
Had to read the last line of the article to get that tidbit. :-)
So if IE is such a small fraction, why not post browser statistics?
Comment Page (Score:5, Informative)
I just hope (Score:4, Insightful)
You guys don't break IE functionality before my work upgrades from IE6... I absolutely despise IE (and IE6 most of all) but can't break free of it yet :(
Mark all posts as read when hitting "more"? (Score:3, Interesting)
I know posts get marked as read when using keyboard navigation, but since I don't want to do that could hitting the "Get More Comments" button at the bottom of the page and/or the "More" link in the slider thingy please mark as read and/or collapse all already shown posts?
That would really make finding the newly added posts a lot easier...
np: Gui Boratto - Mr. Decay (Chromophobia)
Bug Fix Request - Comment Mismoderation (Score:5, Insightful)
I really like the new system(s), especially the async page loading and 'fetch on demand' aspects of comments. But...
Please oh please, add a "submit" button next to the moderation dropdown? It should do the same asynchronous post that selection change of that dropdown does today. It's very easy (especially using a sensitive touchpad) to mis-click on a moderation option - which you can then only undo by replying in the conversation, and losing any point(s) awarded.*
A submit button would remove the accidental moderation issue, and still allow the all the ajaxified web2.0 paradigms to remain intact ;)
* then - to add insult to injury - usually get that corrective post modded down as offtopic because of some moderator a power trip
Suggestion. (Score:4, Interesting)
How about having the username field get focus when you log in.
It would save a little time when logging in.
Classical Style (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand: Please don't ignore us users who still use the good old classic style. I simply like my /. without fancy effects and strange navigation bars. Threshold of 3, nested, oldest comments first, re-parenting comments and a link i can open in a new tab to read the stuff below my threshold is all I want and need.
Long story short: While developing all the exciting new stuff, please don't completely ignore or remove (*shock* *horror*) ye goode olde Slashdot layout. It works currently, has served many people well for quite a while now and hopefully doesn't cause too much work for you guys. Just please fix it every now and then in case you break it.
Moderation Bug? (Score:4, Insightful)
Can anyone verify?
Of course, I discovered the issue when I wanted to moderate a post but couldn't because the select was missing; however the select was present for all of the post's siblings.
Re:Moderation Bug? (Score:4, Funny)
Mods?
You don't have to mod but a comment would be useful.
Is the moderation select box available for this post?
I promise I'll stop now, Slash-filter
But... (Score:4, Insightful)
Tags (Score:3, Interesting)
* Exactly how heavy of a beta are tags still under? You're aware that not every tag works (when you click the triangle sometimes you end up on your user page, or elsewhere)
* How does the algorithm work (and how the hell do some of the crazy one of a kind tags get chosen)?
* How much
* Any plans for future development (suggestion: if you are using an algorithm, show the tags about to be promoted in a different color, so users can input those if they agree).
A fully automated tag system is not an easy thing to do (I would think), so I'm not griping. I'm just genuinely curious (but admittedly still too lazy to look the code up).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I still don't understand how the hell the tags work.
That's ok. The Slashdot developers have no clue what they do or what they should do, either.
It's like when you're hanging out with your stoner friends and you get seriously toasted and someone's looking at the pot-bag and says "We should make some system for putting different tags on the different bags of pot" and you say "Yeah!! That would rock! That's a genius idea!", and you go rummage around the house and find clothes pins and you attach plastic tag-th
need these achievements (Score:5, Funny)
firstpost - posted first
troll - moderation ended with a max troll mod
flamebait - moderation ended with a max flamebait mod
goatse - posted a goatse link
blind - followed a goatse link
gone1week - survived 1 week w/o slashdot
gone1month - survived 1 month w/o slashdot
gone1year - survived 1 year w/o slashdot
storypassion - posted the most comments in a story
netcraft - explained why BSD is dying
How about fixing the code so I can turn it OFF? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about fixing the code so that the {FOO}.slashdot.org servers honor my login and selection of "classic" mode, so I can read and comment on stories that are hosted on the subsidiary servers?
I have a number of machines from which I read and post. Unfortunately, some of them (unavoidably) have ancient browsers that are REALLY unhappy with the new features.
While I may chose to play with or switch to the new functionality on machines where it works, I don't appreciate being cut off from participation in slashdot when the only machines I can use are those where it's broken.
Confused... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a firefox user AND I've been using index2 for a while (Don't know how it got activated, just showed up one day). Should I assume the behaviours is about the same as now, but faster? If so, good job!
It takes some time to get used to the new timer thing, but one used to it everything is all good. The only recommendation I could makes is that when you pop-up the resume due to inactivity dialogue, that the resume is an image, larger, centre justified, and maybe a brief description of why you're 'pausing the web page'
PS: I'm so NOT used to the whole streaming of new data thing that I still refresh excessively.
Re:The Maker Achievement (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I don't have it, so I guess it's not related to spending ludicrous amounts of time posting stupid jokes on Slashdot instead of working...
Re:10% of 1% (Score:4, Insightful)
Those of us with a functioning brain switched off the Javascript Web 2.0 crap the day you foisted it on us, and we'll continue to read Slashdot the way we always have.
Those of you with functioning brains prefer larger downloads, and waiting for full page loads before replying and after moderating? Ah, right, and having to refresh the page every time you change your threshold?
Phew. Sure am glad my brain is broken then. Among other advantages, those of us with non-functional brains realize that just because a technology happens to have a buzzword attached to it doesn't mean that the technology itself is a bad thing.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Those of you with functioning brains prefer larger downloads
No, those of us with functioning brains realize the download size doesn't matter -- it's the response speed. Since the majority of the download is auxiliary content (graphics, Javascript, what have you), a few kilobytes of text one way or the other won't make any noticeable difference
and waiting for full page loads before replying
Some of us like to, you know, Read The Fine Article first.
and after moderating?
Honestly, the delay had never registered with me. Maybe my ADHD quotient is too low?
Ah, right, and having to refresh the page every time you change your threshold?
I haven't changed my threshold in... good grief, I can't even remember. Years, any
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of us like to, you know, Read The Fine Article first.
What does that have to do with anything? Click reply. Wait for the reply page to load. Article is in a different tab and already read...
But anyway - to summarize, you're saying that I don't need the services I think I need, because you don't, and therefore nobody should. Does that about cover it?
I've actually tried the new-style discussion interface several times since it was introduced, and frankly I just can't bring myself to like it. Partly because I hate floating widgets (they flicker too much), partly because I can't (i.e. haven't felt like taking the time to) figure out how comments are ordered, and partly, well, just because; maybe it's the Office 2007 ribbon effect of being annoyed by an arbitrarily changed interface.
Fair enough, but again yours is not the only user experience. Clearly sufficient numbers of slashdotters have left it enabled and continue to use it - therefore see some value in it.
Tangentally - flickering?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Those of you with functioning brains prefer larger downloads, and waiting for full page loads before replying and after moderating? Ah, right, and having to refresh the page every time you change your threshold?
Some of us are at workplaces that treat every page fetch as 5 minutes of slacking off. Web 2.0 can make you look in the logs like you're wasting 40 hours a day.
Re:10% of 1% (Score:4, Interesting)
And, to expand...
The old interface took 1-2 seconds to load a full page.
The new interface takes 1 second to load the page, and anywhere from 1 to 30 (yes, 30!!!) seconds to process the script. While it does this, I/O with the browser is blocked.
Yep. I can really see the advantage here.
Re:10% of 1% (Score:4, Insightful)
Haven't had those issues. Takes me a second to load the page, period. I've had no noticeable delays in processing script. I have had no other tabs get blocked while loading slashdot pages.
Your response is consistent with the theme of replies to my post: "I personally (don't use|don't like|have bad experience) with the new interface, therefore there is no advantage to it and you are wrong."
Re:Test (Score:5, Interesting)
UTF-8 support .... that's a no.
I'm guessing that's a no on purpose. Slashdot whitelists characters so that posters can't use the bidirectional characters to destroy the layout.
Re:Test (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem isn't the blocking of bi-di characters (or other wacky Unicode that breaks stuff). The problem is the blocking of ALL non-ASCII, even perfectly valid things like currency symbols, accented letters, and similar helpful little characters.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot whitelists characters so that posters can't use the bidirectional characters to destroy the layout.
The perlunicode page is not that hard to figure out, seriously.