I abhor puke-inducing cutesy smilies, avatars, and other images that add nothing to the discussion.I usually do to but I find myself pausing at rdb3's logo on long threads.
Posted on 10/27/2005 5:16:18 PM PDT by John Robinson
Edited on 10/30/2005 2:01:52 PM PST by John Robinson. [history]
I'm working on the following changes to the forum software:
Old links will be redirected to maintain bookmark compatibility. The new links will be more descriptive, offering the date of the article and perhaps a meaningful filename.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1510575/posts doesn't say much.
http://www.freerepublic.com/2005/10/27/freeptoon/p1 says so much more.
The timestamps on threads will change to your computer's local time zone, but only if you have JavaScript enabled. Otherwise they will be in US/Eastern. Your FR preference will be ignored (and will be phased out in favor of browser-side time zone handling.) The beauty of this arrangement is that as long as your computer displays the time in your time zone, FR will "Do The Right Thing"(tm).
No more than 50 comments per page will be shown. Your preference of 20, 100 or 250 is going to be ignored. I know this is a bit of a heartbreak for some, I understand it is a sacrifice. There are very good and very strong reasons this is changing.
Only the first page of the thread will show the article text, and will always show the article text. Subsequent pages will only ever show a summary. In the future, a little browser-side magic could make the article text appear when you click a link.
Everybody logged in or not will see the same content and links. For example, in the existing software, if you're not logged in you won't see the "Report Abuse" links. This check is going away, everybody will now see the same row of buttons.
In exchange, we'll have cache-friendly forum pages. This means:
Update 10/30/05
I've expanded the scope of changes. I'm cleaning up the information we present to search engines like Google and Yahoo. Our site will be more useful to third-party search engines and thus more useful to you. For the most part this will not directly impact our human visitors. There will be changes that could break bookmarks of certain types of pages, but the chances such bookmarks have ever been made are slim.
Actually, what's new on the RSS front? I'm not sure if basing the site more on Web Services would be easier or more difficult.
I will say that it would be nice to be able to get an RSS feed of my pings.
Is there any possible way to anote the pages with the depth of the thread in terms of pages...
Either visually or in the URL...
In other words somwhere on the page it might read somthing like Page 1 of 3, or the url could have some string like "1of4"...
It could be in the source too...
Just curious...
It would be easier than parsing the source...
Technically, I think the easiest way to handle this is to apply a CSS class name derived from the poster's name to the div fully containing the message. Something like this:
<div class="message u22380">some vapid or daft comment</div>
And then instruct CSS to hide that user's messages: .u22380 { display: none } This of course would all be transparent to the end-user. A better alternative would be to employ JavaScript to fold that user's message, allowing a click to venture were you promised you wouldn't.
Here they come again, mmmm-mm-mm
Cache us if you can, mmmm-mm-mm
Time to get a move on, mmmm-mm-mm
We will yell with all of our mightCache us if you can
Cache us if you can
Cache us if you can
Cache us if you canNow we gotta run, mmmm-mm-mm
No more time for fun, mmmm-mm-mm
When we're gettin' angry, mmmm-mm-mm
We will yell with all of our mightCache us if you can
Cache us if you can
Cache us if you can
Cache us if you can
Well crap, how will I know if I'm logged in or not??? I'll guess I'll just have to post a vanity and ask......
I don't know what the hell yur doin' but Keep it up! :-)
Very cool! Thanks for all you do.
Thanks, sir.
To be perfectly honest, I construe this as a feature. I abhor puke-inducing cutesy smilies, avatars, and other images that add nothing to the discussion. That's just my personal opinion, however.
I love this fourm.
read later...
I abhor puke-inducing cutesy smilies, avatars, and other images that add nothing to the discussion. That's just my personal opinion, however.
I can't spell.
nice work.
we need a little real time java applet that runs and shows which threads are receiving new posts - or at least the "top10" hotlist of threads getting new posts.
I abhor puke-inducing cutesy smilies, avatars, and other images that add nothing to the discussion.I usually do to but I find myself pausing at rdb3's logo on long threads.
Except the kitties, we love seeing pics of the viking kitties!
Except the kitties, we love seeing pics of the viking kitties!
Almost any of the URLs that end in "browse" have an alternate "browse.rss" for the feed. I'd like to do this for threads too, but I don't know if it is kosher to dump raw HTML into an RSS feed, and if not, I'll have a bit more work to do. My comments would be great as well but is a bit more work, having to implement some type of authentication scheme beyond the cookie (unless RSS aggregators can now borrow the MSIE cookie, etc.)
One of the things really holding back my involvement with RSS is the lack of a decent aggregator. I haven't really looked, but my cursory attempts to find something decent leave me wanting.
I definately want to implement an API for the site. It will primarily be used for Ajax-style client-side programming, but could be used for external access as well.
clever use of css ... I will try that later
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