Ideas for ILX

Does anyone have any ideas for things they'd like to see - I've kind of run out of ideas for now. I can't promise I'll do them: some things are easy, some are hard, some might be unrealistic (need to bear in mind performance and avoidance of poxy fules and so on); also, how much it interests me is the most important motivating factor... It'd be good to hear people's thoughts.

I will put the stats thing back at some point, but perhaps in a bit of a different form.

Oooo!

More poll forms would be fun. One that allowed you to rank the options from first to last, say, or just allowed you to tick multiple boxes, livejournal style.

• make a toggle option allowing mods to see either images or image links
• let poll options allow more characters
• get rid of suggest ban
• pizza subs tuesdays

The mod image thing is a security thing. If it weren't any sort of issue I would just turn them on.

Oh right, you've said that before. Perhaps I am ignorant, but I don't get why it's a security thing?

Love Gravel's ideas.

A preview screen. I've been tempted at times to just throw in a [//x] every once in awhile so at least the BBcode warning page will let me take a second glance.

It's a long and complicated story, but the root of it is that when your browser tries to go and get a picture, it doesn't check that it's a picture and if it's a piece of script instead, will just happily execute it, which can be subverted to make existing mods do things they didn't know they were doing (e.g. grant someone else mod privileges or whatever).

a kudos/props/Suggest Unban button, with the 51 resulting in an automatic permaban being an aggregate of the two. last time I mention this, I promise.

I see. What about for mods that don't have that many privileges in the first place, like me and other subboard mods? Sorry to go on about this, but 1p3 is 90% picture threads!

Also, I think ILX is great as is and I would just say: continue keeping it simple and plain.

Roxy, yes there's less danger there, but you can still ban people, delete posts, delete threads, unban people etc.

I mean if it helps, happy to unmod you.

continue keeping it simple and plain

^^^ seconded - I love love love the way that ILX threads load up super quick, compared to other boards where you're sitting around waiting for two minutes.

Sheesh, just asking!

avatars

No avatars! Ever!

Nick, that's OK: suggest ban is the best feature I've ever come up with - I think there are any number of ways you could subtly modify it and I have changed it recently it to drop older SBs from people, but I doubt we'll ever conclude on the 'right' way for it to work, and the people who don't like it, I doubt will ever be convinced, so would be good if this thread didn't become about that; I've little doubt it'll be discussed probably at length elsewhere.

Yeah, I wasn't really thinking of avatars!

no avatars - please, I think that's the start of a slippery slope towards phpBB style bloat

i echo Roxy's simple and plain praise. love that.

i would also love to see a magenta screen with white font option

I love love love the way that ILX threads load up super quick

Yes I like this - someone described other message boards as having a kind of underwater feeling... That said, ILX isn't fast because it's minimal on the screen; it's because of the server software - could afford to put quite a lot more on the screen without it becoming slow. Not that this is necessarily a good idea.

Surm, appreciate CSS might not be your thing, but if it is, then you can make a stylesheet to look like that and I'll stick it up... There are some instructions (a little out of date, but basically OK) here: http://www.ilxor.com/ilxstyles.html

ignore lists

http://www.b3tards.com/u/c2d08cf4e23cfbd9a0c0/duck_hunt_dog.gif

i've got no complaints except olive is still showing up blue on SNA colors!

maybe i can get kenan to make me one... i'm using his gray one now and it's real nice

Oh bugger! That's easy enough to fix, Harbl.

Bug, yes I was thinking that would be something I should do.

ilx is the hottness of message boards. i do think surm's suggestion should be mandatory not optional, though. :)

Harbl, fixed the colour thing - it'll be Olive when I next upload the software.

=) <3 xp

More poll forms would be fun. One that allowed you to rank the options from first to last, s

I like the sound of that.

I love the "view previous page" option, by the way.

No avatars?

http://i25.tinypic.com/4rqkvc.jpg

thanks :) xp

Some kind of two minute "Edit my last message" option in case of tpyos you only notice after you hit submit.

On the other hand, ILX is ILX because there are no Avatars or Edit after submit options. Read what you tpye before you submit and you won't post typos.

XML access to bookmarks that have new answers is top o my wishlist :)

ILX threads can get so fast that it's more like chat than forum, so even 2mins can be way too long.

Could there be a count of the number of users online displayed at the top somewhere? Just a simple count of logged-in users (but not names, cos that would be crepey). Wouldn't be at all useful, just mildly intersting.

ILX threads can get so fast that it's more like chat than forum, so even 2mins can be way too long.

― stet, Saturday, 1 August 2009 21:00 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

This is the reason I Love ILX over all others. It's both at the same time. And needs to stay that way.

"I have changed it recently it to drop older SBs from people"

this sounds like a really good idea! can i ask what the cutoff point is?

I think the general feeling is: nothing drastic, please, only small functional adjustments. Right?

People who haven't posted for six months should have all the bans they've suggested returned to them in a box.

I would like a way to see how many SB's you have. (Now, I have no idea how annoying I am.)

Yeah, I'm not a fan of SB in general, but it seems like it would do more good if a person saw that they were getting close to the mark.

some sort of something to fix the webmailing reply issue

Could there be a count of the number of users online displayed at the top somewhere? Just a simple count of logged-in users (but not names, cos that would be crepey). Wouldn't be at all useful, just mildly interesting.

Yeah that's a nice idea, maybe wouldn't be too difficult to do either.

Stan - I've never been convinced by people's anti-SB argument around the "for the lols" thing, because no-one can see it. This is why I didn't make it available, so that it couldn't be used in this way. That said, I've been considering maybe warning people when they get to 40 or something. This would only affect a few people. Also - I wouldn't worry about your own position re: SBs.

S1ocki, I don't know what the issue is. I was asked recently to remove 'reply to' from webmail, because people were being hassled off board.

Ok, thanks, that makes sense (why SBs aren't public). xpost

S1ocki, I don't know what the issue is. I was asked recently to remove 'reply to' from webmail, because people were being hassled off board.

― Keith, Saturday, August 1, 2009 5:11 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there was ever a "reply to"?

every webmail i've gotten has been unreplyable. which is ok, but maybe there shoudl be some sort of reminder to put your own email address in the message? or even an optional field for your email addy?

More poll forms would be fun. One that allowed you to rank the options from first to last, say, or just allowed you to tick multiple boxes, livejournal style.

Would like this!

Also, if you decide to _not_ bring back lists of ILX-wide stats, I would still be interested in personal stats on on each person's profile page re: how many posts they've made, how many threads they've started, etc. Or at least a way for each user to see their own info.

Oh, and that secret cool feature Ned Raggett has that notifies him as soon as someone mentions his name anywhere on ILX causing him to show up.

*holds breath & refreshes like mad*

but maybe there shoudl be some sort of reminder to put your own email address in the message? or even an optional field for your email addy?

Sure...

Musically, I do actually have these numbers, but what you're specifically asking for is one of the reasons I got rid of the stats thing! Tom Ewing wrote an article about this... Having # posts against each user automatically gives certain people status in the community, and this isn't necessarily a good thing (loads of posts doesn't mean loads of quality posts), so what I was thinking of was some more point in time stats, like # posts in the last week or month or something, which would be a bit more interesting anyway, as it changes more frequently.

Re: your own info, then yes sure - no reason not to show it there.

Oh and for now, you've made 3,839 posts.

omg i want to know mine!

... and 35 good ones! ;-) (xpost)

Surm, 1,209

OK, olive should be olive, webmail has a note on it warning you to stick your email address in it and there's XML for bookmarks that have new answers.

Stet: http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/BookmarksControllerServlet?xml=true

(not choosing these out of favouritism, they were just some of the easier things for now)

Ho, top, cheers! Pints are yours.

Man, I loved the stats page.

Well, if you want stats for now, which ones and I'll just run them and post them...

Saturday night and no f***er is up for a drink, so at a loose end!

love where we're at now (with the exception of SB, which was an interesting idea and i'm sure not trivial to implement, but it's changed things for the worse imo). i'm generally opposed to new features that change the way ilx works as a magical community of social retards rather than just improve the UI (like remove bookmark links at the end of bookmarked threads) or are just cosmetic (like CSS changes).

preview would be great.

"magical community of social retards"

all my thoughts already mentioned

"continue keeping it simple and plain"

^this above all :)

It sounds better and more true than "a social community of magical retards" (xpost)

Re: the simple and plain thing, I've certainly no plans to change that. I do think the thing is very economical and helps you get straight to the actual important info - what people are posting. I find these PHPBB things really horrible with a really low signal to noise ratio, in that about 20cm on the screen can be taken up by someone saying 'lol' or the like.

lol

i agree, that is terrible

I am super pro-expanding poll options. I think they've grown to play a decently big role here, and you can do lots of pretty interesting things w/ statistics and rankings and stuff.

I agree, it's just one of the harder things to do...

But will spend some time thinking it through.

maybe we can have a function for the race demographics off poll participants

What about a poll option that automatically SBs anybody who starts more than one poll in a week?

Or a function that blows up your computer if you start a poll on something that was done 2 months ago?

Or maybe shoots nerve gas out of your keyboard if you start a poll about Animal Collective?

yeah maybe some polls with two axes so then you can make a histogram based on the respondent's age/sex/whatever

yeah anything that blows up your computer is cool

I'd like a function that prevented people getting uptight about the fact that other people may have discussed the same subject in the past. xx-post

hey thanks in advance Keith for anything you decide to do

how many posts have i made?

Would like to have a simple link to threads I'm on, please!

Granny, thanks.

Pfunkboy: 15,732

Meg, don't quite understand that... Can't you get it from your browser's address bar? Maybe that's not what you mean.

thanks, keith!

what about an unsuggest ban option? I think I have sb'd one or two people on accident.

I hope StanM didn't die by holding his breath for half an hour.

no like automatically bookmarking threads you posted on? except you can just click bookmark xp

only another 545987098767676 posts to catch up with Ned mind you

No, I mean if I want to see which threads I've contributed to recently/ever. Without having to click bookmark every time.

Hooray! xxxpost :-)

Oh OK, Meg... Hang on a tick...

X-post Harbl has gottit.

Meg, forgot about this, did it some time ago and have just turned it on... See the menu bar for a "My Recent Posts" option. This might go at least some way to what you're looking for.

i would like a function where anyone attempting to a thread with more than 200 new answers has the add a post box replaced with:

http://www.blogcdn.com/nintendo.joystiq.com/media/2008/06/nintendo_take_break_final_break_lg.jpg

Ooh, lovely, thanks :)

x-post

oooh, that My Recent Posts is great! Thanks!

No bother, was worth discussing as I forgot I did it!

I, ned raggett, would like to know how many posts I've made

Before you ask - it'll be about 15 minutes out of date, the "My Recent Posts" thing.

also a "suggest fap" button that fires a shock into any ilxors tether collars within 20 miles.

t-shirts. we really need t-shirts. they don't have to be xian. there should really be an online gift shop. coffee mugs, etc. as a way to pay for future computer, um, stuff. i just really want a mark sinker coffee mug.

I dunno if this is just a css thing, an option I don't know about, or a purposeful security thing, but when I'm On iPhone, all pictures show up as links.

It'd be great if I had an option to change that, since I don't have a non-work desktop right now and am totally missing picture threads.

a coffee mug that says "i would just like to point out that i am otm"

Is there a way to read archived threads easily on a cell phone? What I get is a long column with only a few characters per line, making it impossible to read even a single post via cell (e.g., words are broken apart several times, with lines of two or three characters apiece stacked on top of each other).

If there's an easy way to read archived threads via cell, I just haven't found it, and I apologize for asking; if not, I'd like to see the process made easier.

Thanks for this thread, BTW. Overall, ILX is great the way it is.

The phone stuff I'm not sure, I'll need to take a look.

I too would like a Mark Sinker mug.

Energy Food, the links thing was deliberate because of bandwidth (threads would take ages to load)... It just automatically does that for mobile devices. I suppose the 3G ones are getting more popular now, so could consider turning that off.

Long live Opera Mini! I can see everything except animated gifs and videos on my non-iphone cell.

I don't know if this has ever been addressed. But can we adopt the way blogspot uses formatting, i.e. highlight your text and then click an option below which italicizes/bolds/underlines/etc. it?

Also, with all the earnestness and non-snarkiness I can muster, is there a post somewhere that explains this?: "suggest ban is the best feature I've ever come up with"

Otherwise, love everything. No avatars! Wish more pages on the interwebs were this easy to load. Etc. Great job!

There's probably not a post to explain that, at least in one place anyway, but your post might highlight it, though I doubt it's affected you in any way, but this place is in my opinion about ten times less snarky than it was this time last year and watching the numbers on this, I think that SB is part of that.

For me the "show all 221 unread messages" break works better in theory than in practice.

I have a fast enough connection so if there was an option to Always Load All Messages by default that would be cool. Then maybe if I was browsing on my phone or whatever I could revert to hiding some messages.

Or maybe a way to customize which messages aren't loaded... For me not loading the beginning of the thread would be preferable to not loading the middle.

I have a fast enough connection so if there was an option to Always Load All Messages by default that would be cool.

Seconded.

Fields, the thing is that the reason it's really fast is in part because people aren't always loading all messages. It's about the scale of it... At the moment, there may be say 400 active users, all only getting 200 messages each. Now maybe a few of them want to read the whole thread, so they click the link.

If I changed that, we would have 400 users all getting all the messages and a resultant drop in performance for everyone, so I appreciate it can be a bit of a pain, but I think it's for the greater good.

To answer yer question kjb, speaking as a sitewide mod, sb with few exceptions has a) led to bannings that would have otherwise been done by mods anyway (and subject to the usual clusterfuckedness and accusations of personal spite and b) alerted mods to some totally banworthy behavior by posters on threads that might have otherwise flown under the radar. If some random new dude starts throwing racist abusive nonsense for example a bunch of sbs can send up an alert without drawing the attention of the community as a whole, which is like the best antitrolling feature ever

Oh I would like an option similar to "go to most recent answer" that instead takes you to the "-- new answers are hidden, click here to show them all" break

i would like it if key words could trigger a 'would you rather post this to ILTMI?' option (controversial!) - as a suggestion, like when it pops up potential duplicate threads.

n/a why not just click 'load all messages' at the top?

See the bottom of the "Boards" page for the currently active users:

12 logged in users active in the past two minutes

i would also argue that sb has led to fewer bannings than would have otherwise occurred - it allows the mods to step back and look at the feelings of posters as a whole. i mean hey we're human, and we have hot buttons like anyone else, sb allows (for me at least, not trying to speak for everyone here) us to measure shit that drives us nuts vs. the feelings of peeps in general.

that said lets not have another go around on sb CONTROVERSY in this thread if possible, we have plenty of others where that can get discussed.

xposts

Replace all of POSTER X's posts with random pictures of cute ducks.
When we click "Skipping all messages...", instead of loading the entire thread, a (Preferences) option to load from the point where the thread starts skipping. Like, if the thread cuts off at the 50th post, click the cut link would load the thread starting with post 51.
Avatars.
Rating posts.

neat stuff keith! really interesting to see # of active users

btw as a dopey computer challenged dude, the speed with which keith can make things happen is both o_O and awesome.

u r magical!

xpost

Sometimes when there are big clusterfuck threads I don't want to read the whole thing, just get caught up on the last 50 posts, so it would be nice to jump right to the break

Yeah it is, isn't it? I don't really know what to expect.

What I do know is that about half the hits to ILX are from outside of ILX, so for the full number of users, it's pretty much doubling that.

x-post Cheers John

xxxxxpost OK thanx jjj! Now if only we could adopt blogspot's formatting help... :)

Kevin, yes I have thought about the formatting help in the past - I'd like to do it... It's a little tricky but I'll see what I can do - might take some time.

hey n/a ctrl+f "skip" is what i do, sounds cumbersome but ya get fast at it

xpos ok keith thanx. u rock!

my recent posts is A+

Thanks. My recent posts are A+

Keith: Ah gotcha re: server performance. So what about a way to not load the start of the thread instead of not loading the middle? Or maybe some fine tuning of some kind.Sometimes I have to load all the messages to just get the two or three I hadn't seen since the last time I checked a particular thread. (I hope that makes sense, I'm not sure I'm explaining it right.)

i know, i can finally easily just see a huge list of all my own posts and read and reread them over and over again, its exciting, really seperating the wheat from the chaff here

Yes, I see. Yes I could do that - get the most recent 100 or something.

The original logic some years ago was to be as much to as many people as possible - to allow people to read the context of what the thread was about as well as always get the most recent stuff, but yes I could do what you're suggesting, though I'd need to think how it would work ergonomically...

x-post lol

I've often wished for some rearrangement of the Search page, so I don't have to scroll past the instructions to click in the search field.

There are probably some other ways the Search page could be made more ergonomic -- the pull-down list of boards has always felt kind of cumbersome -- but I'm not sure what specific changes I'd suggest.

If the rest of the Internet were as functional as ILM, life would be sweet indeed.

Yes, I do agree it's not great that page. I recently moved the titles and posts button to make it more obvious, but it isn't obvious to me how to best reorganize it to make it much better...

maybe make something like in the style of the "show formatting help" button on it

Yes...

I also just want to mention how much I love blueski-2.css. It's so "in the spirit" of ILX and I am very fond of it.

i dont know, maybe that didnt make sense

I think it probably did... I did it.

Dropping the search instructions below the two forms would reduce the amount of scrolling required ... there could be a link at the top of the page to jump down to the instructions.

Are the two forms used about equally? I don't know if I've ever used the Given User feature. If there were a separate page for the Text Search form, I'd probably go there directly.

Just speaking from my own experience, having the Text Search form remember its settings from my most recent search, and selecting the text entry field automatically when I enter that page, would be great for doing repeated searches.

oh cool xpost

I think ilx is just dandy.

I am another who would like to know how many posts I've made, Keith. Would be interesting as I've only ever been a sporadic poster but have been here for around 9 years. Eek.

Emily, 1,963 posts

Brad, yes having it remember settings would be good, though obviously a bit harder.

the current post count is for the last 2 years (since relaunch) or all-time?

If it's all-time, then that's about 218 posts a year. 18 posts a month. 4.5 posts per week. Less than one per day. So technically I don't post here at all.

Tehresa, it's probably since relaunch, unless you used the same email address as you did before, as everyone re-registered.

Hey keith, how about when someone clicks on a thread, you stick a "view previous page" above the first unread message, show the next 100 msgs, and if there are more, stick a "display all messages" @ the end. Not sure if some1 said this already but I think it's what others were getting at

Thanks, Keith!

OK I get that. To be honest, the code that displays the messages and does all that stuff is so massively complex I might have trouble - it's certainly the messiest bit of ILX. There's so much going on in different circumstances, but if I could figure it, then that would make some sense.

x-post

Keith you are grebt and I'm sorry if that post came off a bit demanding or entitled!

Xp cool

Keith, would it be easy to create a yes/no preference that would let Admin Functions show for sitewide mods all the time?

This is all very cool, btw! I'm sorry nobody could go out to the pub tonight, but it's ILX's gain!

Oh that's OK, it didnt... x-post.

Rock, yes that would be OK, but surprised you'd want it!

could you do that for all mods?

If I were to do it, I wouldn't differentiate.

everybody here is equally kind

I might hate it, but it would be cool to have the option, esp. on the occasional thread where 20 people want to know how many SBs they have. Currently, every time a mod refreshes the thread, the admin functions go away.

oh actually iw as going to mention that on my cell browser (blackberry) the admin functions are ALWAYS there. not sure if that's fixable, obviously not a priority.

Dunno Tehresa, My work blackberry is broken at the moment, but I'll have a look when I get it sorted or get a new one. It's probably just because they just don't work very well!

Alternatively, use the mobile interface and avoid the admin links altogether.

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/BoardsXmlControllerServlet?stylesheet=mobile.xsl

yeah, that stylesheet results in lolhueg text for some reason? not a big deal/priority, really.

Is it still like that? I changed it to make it smaller, recently. If it's still too big, let me know and I'll change it.

One version or other back in the mists of time changed the shape and filled-ness of the bullets in new answers depending on whether there were new answers since you last read it. This is probably a minor CSS thing, but can we have it back?

Also can we have a mobile interface that is a little more blackberry friendly, I should check out the mobile interface again and tell you what that means.

Could the search function be changed so that if you put in a start date and no end date it searches everything newer than that date? At the moment it ignores the start date if there's no end date, so you have to make up a date in the future. Not much of a problem, but still...

(Possibly similar for end date and no start date, but I don't do that very often)

Thanks, sorry.

Ed, that was never in my version so it's programming work, but I'll see what I can do.

Spacecadet, yes I didn't know that was an issue; it should behave as you say.

whoa that was cool. i just clicked on that link keith posted and now everything is awesome

One request I have would be to notify me when a poll has ended that I had voted in. I could just bookmark the thread, but I don't care to follow all the discussion, I just want to know when the results are in.

oh, i have one. on the page where it says youve successfully logged out of ilx, can there be a link to the front page?

seconded

this is really great keith, that we've gotten to the point where it's fun little fine-tuning stuff that we're thinking of

Only thing I'd like is a preview post option, not so much for checking typos but making sure links/pics/formatting shows up ok.

So this thing about bookmarks highlighting where you've unread messages... If I do this, it won't be perfect, in that I don't store on the database where a user last read a thread to, I just store it in memory - the last 200 threads you read and of course this'll all disappear when I restart the server. However, this should be good enough for most purposes.

It's not that, that I think about, but that there are basically three states you can be in:

• You've not read a thread at all (so technically, all of its messages are unread to you)
• You've read a thread and it's not been updated since you read it
• You've read a thread and it's had new messages since you read it

Any thoughts?

well it seems more useful to think of the first two as something you're not interested in, so just the third would be highlighted. like most american posters wouldn't want a dis ting/soccer thread highlighted along with threads they've clicked on (and taken interest in) that have new answers. no offense to "football" but you know. another example would be the 500 cable news threads we have

It probably moves into a slightly different area this, but there are threads I've not read at all because they're newly bumped or I've just missed them, and threads I've not read because I'm never going to (eg football).

I'd like the former to have a highlight and the latter not, but that'd mean effectively a killfile for threads, so you could distinguish.

Xp haha fuk football and skips in general

we're on dis ting kicking a ball into a skip from quite far away

Yes, this is why I think it's tricky. Killfile isn't really a practical option, with 170,000 and growing threads out there.

OK so thinking about it, yes I think it should only highlight threads that you've actually read and that have since been updated.

Would it be possible to search by user AND text? Like if I'm searching for a post where Ned Raggett mentioned Radiohead, and I don't remember the date, it's virtually impossible to find by searching either "Ned Raggett" or "Radiohead" separately.

Jay, you can kind of do this now, though it's certainly not obvious... If you use the text search, and enter something like:

radiohead AND displayName:"Ned Raggett"

It should work - remember to change to posts (if that's what you're looking for).

ignore lists

http://www.b3tards.com/u/c2d08cf4e23cfbd9a0c0/duck_hunt_dog.gif

― galumphing lummox (bug), Saturday, August 1, 2009 3:48 PM (Yesterday)

Bug, yes I was thinking that would be something I should do.

― Keith, Saturday, August 1, 2009 3:49 PM (Yesterday)

An idea from the missus: could this be made thread-specific? Like, ignore (User X) on this thread but not that thread?

RSS feeds for a specific user's posts would be nice.

and crepey

Surm, 1,209

― Keith, Saturday, August 1, 2009 10:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh wow thank you for this btw

how hard would it be to have tabbed new answers lists? sort of like metafilter I guess--where I can have one tab with site new answers, one tab with just ilm, one tab with my favorite sub-boards, all on a single page? would be nice if it updated live but I imagine that's a pain.

I haven't read this entire thread but I wish there was a suggest keep function that would operate exactly like suggest ban except in reverse

my biggest complaint with the suggest ban function is that it only gives voice to the people who say 'no', and it only allows you to vote *against* someone and no way to vote *for* them

dude

Like if I'm searching for a post where Ned Raggett mentioned Radiohead

It's a vision.

OK so if you're logged in, then for any threads you have read, if there are subsequent new messages on that thread, the bullet on the new answers page will indicate it - on most stylesheets as an empty bullet, but as different colours on some. Happy for suggestions except penguins as to how it should be indicated though - for now, let me know if it works OK.

Having the Statscock back would be nice.

update-sensitive bullet seems to be working for me right now! (on blueski-2 i think)

nb all of this is super awesome, Keith, thank you. <3

46 logged in users active in the past five minutes

Sweet! Thanks Keith! Is there an easy way to do this on the new answers page of each board?

I miss RSS, I like to know I haven't missed anything when I haven't been around for a while.

The updated thing wasn't working on others because I forgot to update the stylesheets, but have done so with style and old.

Nick - it's easy to do, it's just a question of finding a neat place to put it... Don't want it to get too cluttered.

Matt - see above.

Ah, thanks.

Also, not sure if this was covered, but the ability for mods to de-index threads with a simple tickbox would be really appreciated.

I'll sort the rest of the stylesheets in a minute for the updated threads thing.

Don't want it to get too cluttered.

Totally agree!

I had to reload the stylesheet for the bullets to work, but it does now.

This is mighty confusing. I'm using Blueski-2.css and the bullets apparently (I never noticed before) are alternating squares: big/small/big/small/big/small.
At the moment, none are empty, but if they were, then empty would mean something, but big/small wouldn't mean anything?

Please to think up some other and immediately obvious way to show new messages on threads (if that's really necessary) (e.g. http://www2.dsre.net/images/blankpage_ico.gif)

I'll sort the rest of the stylesheets in a minute for the updated threads thing.

― Keith, Sunday, August 2, 2009 2:42 PM (28 minutes ago)

Very cool! I loaded old.css long enough to see how it worked, looking forward to seeing it on style3.

ok, so on this stylesheet, it's a black square (big or small) bullet for new messages and a grey (big or small) for no new messages/unread/other.

What browser are you using? They shouldn't be big/small, it's just darker (on mine anyway).

They should be darker when a thread you've read has new answers on it...

Rock - it's done on them all now.

or maybe some kind of "new message on thread since you last visited it" tooltip when hovering over that bullet kinda thing? Not everyone is going to read this thread or immediately guess/see the bullets suddenly mean something.

FFX 3.5.1

Hmm, was working on old.css and now it isn't.

Well, if you can think of something good then yes, but I think some kind of "New Messages" thing would be too intrusive, though I understand it's not immediately obvious what they mean.

Weird, I'm using FFX 3.5.1 too, though on a Mac. Don't get the big/small thing. Perhaps it's the Windows version.

Correction: Blueski-2.css bullets aren't alternating big/small, they're (probably?) totally random:

http://i25.tinypic.com/mskmxd.png

Or are some threads fuller than others, like a fuel gauge? :-)

Ed, it's probably just because I rebooted to fix all the other stylesheets, so the server's forgotten your position on some recent threads.

Yeah, that's weird, Stan I mean the only change to the stylesheet I've made is this:

.updated {
	color: #000;
}

And that style should only be used when the thread's got new messages, so a bit puzzled as to why anything else would have changed.

It may have been like this forever, I only just looked at the bullets since they suddenly mean something. (when they're black, but not when they're big or small)

Right - I mean it feels like a browser rendering thing... No anti-aliasing; that kind of thing. I'll temporarily take the change out and you can let me know if it made a difference... Give me a second.

OK, it should be as was now... Whatever that was.

yup, working again.

Hmmm, style3 still not working, Keith.

The stylesheet is updated... You may need to just shake your browser a bit - they do a good job of caching stylesheets. Try refreshing 'furiously' for a bit.

Nevermind about the Blueski-2.css big/small bullet thing: it's not random, there's a pattern: --.-.--.-.-- (etc) (still confusing though: this doesn't mean anything, but the color does)

Actually, now that you mention it, I've just noticed it on mine too :)

It isn't anything to do with the change; must just be Firefox's rendering. Maybe there's a way to force it, but I doubt it.

Ah! That got it. Quit/restarted Firefox. Thanks!

Let me try circles, Stan - that might be better.

Much better, thanks!

(I was looking at morse code to see if --.-. or .-.-- meant anything, just in case :-) )

Probably is, isn't it. It's all a bit annoying as they're bigger on FFox than they are on Safari, but not a lot I can do, I guess.

My only suggestion is to keep up the good work. I love ILX, because it only changes for the better. None of the "we're changing everything cuz we have to do something with all the designers we hired" that seems to infect other sites. All the gloss is subtle, and in the name of usability. I'm posting from Zing, so I guess my only suggestions would be to polish up Zing, and make Windows/iPhone versions. You guys rock!

Jay, you can kind of do this now, though it's certainly not obvious... If you use the text search, and enter something like:

radiohead AND displayName:"Ned Raggett"

It should work - remember to change to posts (if that's what you're looking for).

― Keith, Sunday, August 2, 2009 10:43 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Excellent, thanks, Keith!

Keith, what classes do I need to add support for to caek.css to make the updated threads list thing work?

print to cafepress button

haha!

hahahaha. i would like a coffee mug that says SUGGEST BAN in the interior once the liquid level gets too low. like, you're not allowed to have too little coffee.

i'm not really sure how this works though, like are you suggest banning the coffee or the mug or?

Maybe the ability to edit a post? I hate reading my own typso.

Typos!

Hey tehresa remember at Sefap you suggeted this idea, a little tab that says

http://www.luxurybath.com/images/partners-microban.jpg

so instead of banning somebody for a few days you just ban them for a few minutes

lol i don't think my idea was that fleshed out; i just saw the label on something and snapped a cell phone pic, and was then pondering what exactly a microban would be.

read before posting

xpost to daniel

i microbanned harbl yesterday!

sometimes you remind me of the duchess from alice in wonderland.

im gonna go back and read this whole thread later, but having more complex poll options, like being able to rank choices 1 thru x, would be great

estela is that a compliment

i would think so!

I do. Still the occasional typo. :(

(xp to Roxy)

of course it is a compliment, you are the shining star of the admin log.

wow ty!!

really digging this bullet thing! thanks, keith!

^^^

also, this is just a small pet peeve of mine, but in the search page, when searching posts by a certain user, could the default be changed to "display name" instead of "email address" as i can't see who would use the email address to search except for mods (?) and lots of times, esp when i'm trying to find a certain post by someone in a rush, i always have to end up clicking back to search because i forgot to change the default

^^ Yeah, cosign that.

OH I HAVE ANOTHER ONE

okay so, could it be possible to order the list of boards on the "boards" page so that i can put the ones that i always read up at the top and the ones that i don't down at the bottom? or like, where it says "ILM Answers" and "ILE Answers" to be able to customize which boards have those links at the top?

you can do the latter in preferences!

buuuuuuurn

ah great, thx t

definitely the bigger one would be having the ablity to order the list of boards on the board page

HEY ANOTHER ONE

is there a way to convert simple html to bbcode? i've never seen that on this site before

this bullet point thing is super cool cuz sometimes... like i don't want to lose a bookmark on a thread (usually to watch a youtube) but i still want to read the thread if there are subsequent posts and beforehand there was no way to figure out if there were new posts unless you watched the thread on SNA, so this is awesome keith

Jordan, cheers, also re: the search you are spot on... I'll change it next chance I get because you are absolutely right.

"My Recent Posts" = cool. Bullets thing is kinda cool too but doesn't looks a bit off in the default style - maybe they should be squares?

Maybe the ability to edit a post? I hate reading my own typso.

This! I would like a way to Preview the post before submitting it - like a client-side check for bbcode errors and images and such to make sure you're not messing things up.

Yes I'll have a think about that - several people have asked for that.

Sorted the search defaults.

it already sends your post back if you mess up code...further than that, just read your posts.

xp

Your post count displayed on the boards page.

You have posted 3,284 messages

oooooooohh i like

6,543. Reverse countdown, nice. Maybe I'll just stop now. Oh crap.

OK mods can now deindex threads. Note that all this does is puts something in the thread to instruct Google and the like to either not index it, or to deindex it - it'll take time if it's already indexed and there's no guarantee that any given search engine will take notice of the deindex instruction.

Ta very much, you rock.

You have posted 33,798 messages

Shudder.

I saw how many messages I posted and I about spat out my soup.

xp now I don't feel so bad

You have posted 128,089 messages

That's it?

Yes you really need to start putting your mind to this.

Wait are these stats since the dawn of ILX or just since ILX2? Apologies if that's been asked upthread, it's kinda long.

It depends really. It's not to do with ILX or ILX2, but more to do with whether or not you've been using the same email address, so yours and Ned's stats are correct for the email address/login ID you're currently using.

You have posted 7,184 messages

Is that all, guess I haven't been wasting as much time here as I thought.

Changing subject, would it be possible to have options to sort the new threads pages alphabetically?

Ah right, that is all my ILX posts ever then. Good lord.

Ned, your total is about 2% of the total number of posts on ILX!

Billy, I suppose it would be possible - might seem a little strange though - do you mean to have say the 200 most recent threads, but not ordered by how recent they are, but in alphabetical order?

Yes you really need to start putting your mind to this.

Well I'll get on that.

Ned, your total is about 2% of the total number of posts on ILX!

You have to start somewhere.

Keith, yes. Sometimes I know a thread has been updated recently but can't find it straight away, being able to place them in order could be useful in finding it.

It would be nice to be able to skip directly to the most recent time jump on a thread, rather than having to scroll up and down for ages to find it.

OK, it's not hard to sort them but might have to think about how you choose that option. Bear in mind that some threads are going to weirdly disappear from the middle when they're sorted (as they drop out of the top 200).

You have posted 505 messages

huh really. I thought more like 50. I'd like to think that I remain amazingly anonymous for a 500 post guy.

while I'm here, someone please tell me how to access that titleless NOT WORKSAFE topic before my head explodes in frustration. I thought I was being smart going to blog view but I still can't work out how people are posting in it.

view page source ; )

You can't, it's invite only! (xpost) (damn!)

phew.

Wow I cannot believe I have 1,454 posts on these boards, I would have guessed more like 500. I have been around here a long time but I can barely call myself a lurker with a post count like that.

Ned makes lurkers of us all.

Guys, I am closing in on 50,000.

ok, Ned and jaymc.

Between my old screen name and this one, I'm at ~8500.

how come you can't make a new poll on IRE anymore? the link at the top seems to be gone. i can still see it on 1p3.

You can turn polls off for boards, so I guess this is what's happened here. Why someone did that for IRE, I don't know... Anyone else know?

jergins!!!!!!!!

lol

Hey has the updates on the bullets been turned back off? I was seeing them yesterday but Im not, now. Maybe its my cache?

Actually NM it was.

"You have posted 28,657 messages"

Oh christ, thats a depressing thing to see at the page's top. That many? Get one life, me.

not a fan of the bullets thing, but maybe it's just my stylesheet. I don't really like having some thread I clicked on once but will probably never read again more leftwards on the page than everything else... sticks out too much.

avatars

just a wee joke

You have posted 4.263 messages

WAH? In the seven years? That's about 1,6 posts per day. I R FAIL.

while I'm here, someone please tell me how to access that titleless NOT WORKSAFE topic before my head explodes in frustration. I thought I was being smart going to blog view but I still can't work out how people are posting in it.

― Akon/Family (Merdeyeux), Monday, 3 August 2009 17:24 (Yesterday) Bookmark

Why oh why...

29 logged in users active in the past five minutes

I love this but at the same time I wonder who the users are. I know Ned's here. And Kenan. And I (duh).

I am not here, and I resent the implication.

7 users have entered the room.

Now it's up to 43. Coffee break?

would it be an idea to turn img tags into links for posts older than (say) 7 days (with option to turn back on)? would make threads like WDYLL so much easier to open, or when you're trying to look for an old post quickly in the football thread but when you display all messages and ctrl-f you'll find the bit you want but then it gets bumped off the screen as the old images get loaded up top.

It's easy enough to get a list of names, but as someone says upthread, would be a bit odd to display it.

Ken, I think that might work for the specific case you're talking about, but would probably annoy people in most cases. Maybe there's a way to indicate it, or to easily toggle images hiding or something. I'm having to add in a new menu bar for Billy's alphabetical thing anyway, so maybe it's a place to put it.

Oh heavens. The menu bar is too long already.

Yeah, I know. Not easy and I'm not sure this is that great, but I do need space for more buttons. See here, Kenan:

http://www.ilxor.com/sandbox/SiteNewAnswersControllerServlet

Also, shouldn't you be in bed?

omg i thought this thread was lost forever!!!! this is going to be a good day
http://www.ilxor.com/sandbox/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=141&threadid=695

Did you not know the sandbox was there?

several xposts... This is one of the special cases in which I would recommend a second level of navigation. Maybe block out a "master" list that stays at the top no matter who you are, and looks like the nav at the top does now, and then a second-level list that displays things like what boards you have chosen to put in your special snowflake menu, your own bookmarks, stuff like that. A sidebar would work for that.

The top menu can only get so crazy, and it's pretty crazy. I know having a sidebar would be against everything that ILX stands for, but practicality must prevail.

Yes, I had thought it'd make sense to have the main menu always being the same wherever you are. At the moment, if you go on to an actual board, you get the new question/new poll stuff, so a secondary menu would deal with the context sensitive stuff.

A sidebar though! We're stepping into a world of difficulty there! x-post

Also many xposts... I don't get the alphabetical thing at all. I mean, I get it, but... why not a button that re-sorts the page according to the length of the title? Who said "alphabetical"? (I clearly have not read this thread.)

Ideas for ILX

I see now.

My point stands.

seriously

good job

haha, oh God, how bored was I the day of United Arab Amirites? (I had forgotten I'd even posted on it, and I'm all over it!)

if you know enough of the thread title that resorting alphabetically would help you find it, you might as well just ctrl-f, surely?

keith, did you get time yet to totally revise the suggest ban function, it's motivations and working, etc?

joeks. sterling work!

suggest mod function?

There's a lot of "coulda, not shoulda" already built in, no reason to go much further with that. A lot can be buried without loss of basic function to anyone, save maybe the occasional... um... lovely person who is a bit different from the rest. Like, I think "New Questions" can be dropped from the menu totally, if not from the site. It's not a very efficient way to see what's here at all. New questions are meaningless without new answers, right?

Also the top menu mixes boards, general prefs, and personal prefs. A hierarchy of some kind could only clarify things.

Problem is that people work in different ways. If I dropped New Questions, I'm pretty sure that I'd then find out it was the only thing that someone used.

I think this is a question of kind of rationalising the interface - kind of tidy it up, separate out the context-sensitive options from the options that make sense from anywhere in the site. I think some options I'd like to draw attention to (e.g. customise site new answers) are currently hidden. But it'll take some time to figure out how to organise it.

x-post yes agreed

If I dropped New Questions, I'm pretty sure that I'd then find out it was the only thing that someone used.

I imagine there would be that one guy. What I'm saying is, fuck that guy.

Well OK, there's where we're going to disagree.

hi i use site new questions all the time

when im checking in w/ the board after not having posted in a couple days or whatever, i can read my bookmarks first and then swing to site new questions to see whats new that i dont have bookmarked

I'm not trying to be extra dickish or anything, nor undemocratic. What I mean is, hierarchy of the navigation is going to mean making those decisions at some point anyway. Features that very few people use should be cut or else buried. Being all things to all ilxors is how the menu got a bit inscrutable.

Yeah I think buried is fine - or maybe with a simple default configuration that people can customise, but cutting them altogether likely isn't going to work.

I imagine it would be harder to cut things than leave them there, anyway. Yeah, no need for, like, spite. I didn't mean that.

To slightly shorten the bar sometimes, maybe you could not show the link to the current page? (i.e. No "ILM answers" button when you're on the ILM answers page, no "Boards" button when you're on the board list page already)?

good in theory but in practice that means the menu items are always shifting position, and i think it's better to have them fixed. also sometimes i click on a 'current page' button as a way of refreshing.

Hm... I guess I'm thinking of this from a guided interface kind of angle, but without asking the first question, which is "What does the site need to DO?" Or even "Who is the customer?" Because really, who IS the "customer" for ILX? People who are already here? They're going to bitch like hell as soon as anything is even slightly changed, that's an unpleasant given. But the "customer" isn't the general public, either. Does ILX even WANT to be naturally guiding the general internet toward its most popular boards and most used features? I don't know this.

I mean, yeah, the menu is confusing as hell, but not to ME.

(If you see what I mean.)

Yes it is a good way to think about it. I think at the moment, it's a bit of both. I do think sites need to attract new users or they just get stale, you're right about how difficult people find it dealing with change, but a little at a time works.

The other thing is that we don't really have any stats on what people do use. Although I could probably pull some of them together.

So for example, there have been 24 hits to the site new questions page since yesterday evening. Not many, but it's getting some use.

Part of my problem is that I don't know whether or not the menu is confusing or not. We're all so used to it that it's hard to tell. I mean, it might be confusing, then again, maybe it isn't - I just don't know.

guess papers link in menu plz

Hay, wehn to m33t?

There's only one way to sort this out. POLL.

for me it's not that the menu's confusing, just that the length changes (usually blog view and logout fall off the end on individual thread pages, though that does depend on how wide I've got my browser) and that's mildly... it's not even irritating, it's just a bit messy?
I dunno, I'd rather have a menu bar that's always on two rows (upper one w/ fixed items, lower one changeable), than a single always-shifting one.

how about a ticker that tells you how many times a thread has been viewed? (apologies if this has been suggested already)

an 'excelsior' link where people can click if they found post funny, and if it gets +5 score they go to a dedicated excelsior thread that may actually contain funneys?

xxp yeah I like that idea. The lower one could have e.g. My Recent Posts, Blog View, on the boards/site new answers pages, and New Question, New Poll, for the individual board pages.

Damo, you can kind of see this here: http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/Pages/most-read-threads.jsp

I know it's not on all threads, but I'd be concerned about the snowballing effect it'd create - people would gravitate towards the most read threads and these in turn would get read more.

Part of my problem is that I don't know whether or not the menu is confusing or not.

Here's why I think that it definitely is.

Site New Answers -- first thing in the menu, takes you a weird hinterland that may or may not even have anything in it. Needs to be moved out of the position that's intuitively reserved for a home page.
Search -- search is search, probably ok where it is, but might be better in its own place. Maybe a thin sliver of a search field at the top of every page, above the menu even?
Boards -- If it's the home page, it shouldn't be in the third position on the menu, and if it's a list of boards, it should at least be next to the boards that are listed later in the menu.
Preferences, Bookmarks, My Recent Posts -- user-specific stuff usually all goes together in its own place on the menu or on another menu. "New Question" and "New Poll" probably should be lumped in with these, too. It's the "you're in control" section of the menu.
ILM, ILE, etc. -- see "Boards"
[board you are looking at] New Answers -- probably needs more love than it gets in the menu, since it just kind of appears there without special distinction. Sometimes I want to type "whoami".

And etc.

I'd rather have a menu bar that's always on two rows (upper one w/ fixed items, lower one changeable), than a single always-shifting one.

That would be perfect.

what c sharp said was kind of what i was thinking for a while. the menu being one row with everything on it is weird. should be kind of like

Site New Answers Search Boards Preferences Bookmarks Logout Admin
ILE ILM 1P3G IRE etc. (whatever you put there)
New Question New Poll etc.

in my opinion. having three rows isn't too much, right? if the text is small.

takes you a weird hinterland that may or may not even have anything in it

Eh? When is this true?

I did deliberately put it there some time ago, to emphasize it. I think the issue here is that there is a 'home page', but that the home page isn't in itself really very useful. Site New Answers isn't the home page, but it's the most heavily used page, hence its somewhat privileged position.

Do you use Site New Answers, Kenan, or do you typically use the board you're reading's new answers?

Re: the two row thing - I did try this some time back, but it looked a bit ugly. Can try it again though.

yeah most people use it as their home page, i know i do. i barely ever look at "boards" except to check the admin log

except to check the admin log

Should probably put that in the top left and in bold.

Of course the worst thing about changing these is that I can't just do it once, I have to do it on all of the stylesheets!

Eh? When is this true?

Well... now. ANd now.

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i191/fluxion23/Picture1-3.png

Do you mean you've customised it to show no boards?

Of course the worst thing about changing these is that I can't just do it once, I have to do it on all of the stylesheets!

eh? these are content not style changes surely?

Thanks to the "post count" thing and the "my recent posts" thing I just discovered my 8000th post was "grandad".

obv you would need to add a new style for a second menu. xp.

Indeed, but in changing from one to two rows, I can guarantee that a bunch of the stylesheets will not deal with that well.

Do you mean you've customised it to show no boards?

No, I didn't do that. I have never seen anything on that page. Are you serious, it's the most used page? It's blank for me!

Wow - something is wrong then!

Click the "Site New Answers" header - see what it says in it.

Also, just click the "restore defaults" button - see if that makes it come up with something.

haha kenan

No, sorry. my fault. I unchecked all the boards earlier in this conversation, actually, but I didn't know the difference because I have never clicked on that page.

Yeah, different people using it different ways is the truth.

I was cornfused.

you're living in the past, man! contemporize!

i'd be happy to donate some time to fixing shitty css problems caused by 2nd menu bar.

Ha - it's a good page. I like it; in fact, it's basically all I use.

Cheers, Ledge.

Kenan, don't you use your own stylesheet?!

Jesus... on this "site new answers" page that I swear I have never been to before in my ILX life, the "kenan dark" stylesheet looks like lukewarm shit. Why didn't anyone tell me?!

The links are black there, unlike on the new answers page for whatever board you're on? I feel like boiling my own shoe right now.

It'll only be like that if you've done the 'restore defaults', which actually sets everything to black. It's a bit of a bug really - it should just not put a colour on it.

wait kenan doesn't use site new answers? this is like when lex didn't know who john wayne was

Set in my ways, with the worst of them. I got used to reading one board at a time probably about 8 years ago now, and never thought to do it differently.

NOW I understand how people can so mysteriously keep up with ILE and ILM at the same time! I was always like, "Do they just constantly keep two browser windows open?"

Haha!

keith, thank you for doing all this for us.

Oh that's OK... Cheers.

The black text on the Site New Answers page is unfixable with CSS because of this:

<li><a style='color: #000000'

There's an inline style somewhere, and that'll always trump.

And yes, keith, if I haven't mentioned it in a while... you rule. :)

Yeah, the style is how it does the colouring... The bug is that 'restore defaults' should make it not put the style in at all, not make it set them all to black.

(is this how keith spends his holiday?)

lol - going to Glasgow shortly to see various ILXors and Dr. C.

welcome to site new answers, kenan, you will be able to keep up with site new nonsense better now.

Well, not too much. The stylesheet I use is almost unreadable on that page. I'm kind of glad I didn't know that before, because there's nothing I can do about it. The links are black, black forever. Black like death.

I'll fix that...

And this is the most used page? I could crawl into a hole right now. I feel like I've been walking around with a booger hanging out of my nose for the last 3 years.

Well, we just didn't want to embarrass you by saying anything.

Huh, New Questions. Interesting. I assumed that this would be a list of unanswered questions. Maybe that's how it used to be?

Keith, you are awesome.

Yeah I think buried is fine - or maybe with a simple default configuration that people can customise, but cutting them altogether likely isn't going to work.

― Keith, Tuesday, August 4, 2009 11:58 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I've kind of lost track of what specific menu bar features are getting added here, but philosophically I disagree with this. Getting the UI right is hard, and people are always going to wail and gnash when you take away their pet feature, but my experience of developing for end users is that cutting features that are either little-used, have better alternatives, or are just silly (alphabetical list of threads?!) will make your life easier in the long run, as well as making the site easier to use.

I've got a couple of different menubar mockups kicking about somewhere, will see if they're still relevant.

Keith: could sna colouring use named colours rather than values? That'd let stylesheets define them to fit in.

In Waverley. No sign of Janet Street Porter. Up to anything this afternoon? Will be in Glasgow in 45.

OK, this is maybe a dumb question, but when you're in Site New Answers, is it possible for threads you've clicked on to appear in a different color, just as it is if you were viewing a board on its own? I'm also not sure that the blue used in thread titles on blueski.css is an option on Site New Answers, but I guess I can live with that. (Basically, I want Site New Answers to visually render exactly like blueski.css.)

This works if you stop hiding sub-boards (at least with old.css).

unreg users on IRE

Jaymc, this is the thing that was so disturbing me upthread. There's an errant bit of code that makes all links on the Site New Answers page black, clicked or not clicked, style or no style, no matter what. And only on that page.

Ok, not all links -- all thread title links. Which is kind of even weirder, because every other link on the page is more prominent than the one you want to click.

Kenan, it's not as simple as that. It doesn't style them at all if you've never messed with the customisation.

Jay, yes I'll have a think, but will take a bit of work as I'll need to figure out the maths for hsb colours (to make visited links darker than whatever colour you've chosen or something like that) and so on but I thinking could do it.

Cool, thanks. That's one of the reasons I don't use Site New Answers very often.

You have more than one reason!? :)

yes, that's also my main reason (the other being that a lot of boards confuse me). In any case, thanks a lot for doing this!

hsb? u mean rgb? i'd subtract the same amount - percentage wise - about 25%? from each val. of course you'd have to split the string into the three components.

Well, only a couple of other reasons. One is that if you're following more than a few boards, older threads get bumped off the page more quickly. Another might just be a personal psychological thing -- like it just feels more orderly to look at the boards separately. I feel like I can keep track of things better. But I still use SNA from time to time, mostly to see if I've missed things on the smaller boards I don't check quite as often as ILE/ILM.

No I meant hsb - I think I am right... Doing it in rgb doesn't quite work e.g you can't make red (255-0-0) darker by any easy multiplication of the rgb numbers I think, but you can convert to hsb, reduce the 'b' and then put it back to rgb.

Sorry meant lighter not darker. Not easy this on an iPhone.

Ah okay Jay. Makes sense.

If the colors are CSS instead of hardcoded, you get the darkening for free -- just make them <A class="greenlink" or the like, and in the stylesheet specify a:link to be whatever actual color value you want. If there's no a:visited style, you'll get the browser default, but if you want to make it a darker green or w/e, then the stylesheet can do that.

I can't for the life of me think how a stylesheet could work here but I guess I'll be seeing you shortly so I suppose we can talk it over!

ok, yup, lighter is harder. how would you convert to hsb tho? (btw i think of it as hsv, hence my confusion).

I know that it's not need-to-know for me at this point, but I don't understand what's unavoidable about having an inline style that colors the links on just that one page. But there's a lot I don't know here, and I can happily file this under "known unknowns."

If I could type faster on this thing I would explain my logic! When I'm back at my desk!

it's 'cause of users picking their own colours for site new answers, ain't it? that kind of overrides and sits outside any stylesheet coding.

unless you want to hack every stylesheet with a class for every possible colour (and visited, etc, variations thereon).

users can pick their own colors for... what? They can?

That's it. I think Stet's point is that you could abstract it e.g. the class is 'death' which is defined to be black and you could also hardwire a visited class but this would all seem impractical to me... Black doesn't mean death to Chinese people, for example. My finger hurts.

it does to me

sure, blame it on the chinese

Lol kenan.

Ledge rgb to hsv is a little complicated. Google it. There's an algorithm on wikipedia I think.

So you can pick your own colors for links on the new answers page (which remains future news to me, I don't see any such option), AND you can pick your own stylesheet, which conflicts with the colors the users may have picked... goddamn, man. You're going to give yourself a brain hemorrhage over this. Just DO NOT DO one of those things. Why would you need to do both?

It's been that way for about two years! Click on the site new answers heading.

colour picker is linked from prefs page.

it's 'cause of users picking their own colours for site new answers, ain't it? that kind of overrides and sits outside any stylesheet coding.

Well, even if you don't pick your own colors for Site New Answers, you're still stuck with the default color (black). Basically, as it stands, you can't use SNA without overriding stylesheet colors for thread titles.

Yes you can. The problem arises when you start hiding sub-boards, or at least this is the way old.css behaves; I can't speak for the other stylesheets.

> how would you convert to hsb tho?

java's Color class has a method. (the actual maths is a fiddle, usually a case statement which splits it up into 60 degree segments and treats them differently. http://actionsnippet.com/?p=797 )

Yes you can. The problem arises when you start hiding sub-boards, or at least this is the way old.css behaves; I can't speak for the other stylesheets.

Maybe I don't understand what you're talking about. I just changed my stylesheet to "old.css," I selected show "all" boards in the Site New Answers settings, and I set the color for all of the boards to be the default, black. Site New Answers still shows thread titles as black, rather than the blue/purple of old.css.

Does it do this if you click the "Restore Defaults" button as opposed to manually setting the values?

A-ha! No, it doesn't. I forgot about "Restore Defaults." Yeah, that works fine then, even with blueski.css. So the problem only develops if you set preferences for Site New Answers.

Correct.

(which is why I never changed the preferences for SNA)

I just figured there were some boards that I wouldn't want to be shown, since I never read them, but I'm looking at the default SNA page right now, and it appears no one else reads them either lol.

How come the boards on the "Boards" page and the "I Want to Change the Boards Shown on Site New Answers..." in a different order? Not important at all, just noticed.

"I Want ... " is ordered alphabetically. The boards page has ILM and ILE at the top, then it's broadly alphabetical except for some new ones, TMI is up and the top and People/Vinyl/Photography are at the bottom. I think it could be tweaked.

Yes, it's because I have some functionality that allows you to define the order of boards and create folder and put things in on the front page, that's basically never been used.

I've just moved the newer boards into alphabetical order. The other one is just in alphabetical order as it's sorted before being displayed.

Jay, I tried to do the link visited thing for colours - I had hoped to set a visited link to a darker colour, based on whatever colour you had selected for that thread, but it seems as though it's impossible to set the 'visited' status of a link, on a link-by-link basis, which makes this very tricky.

Nonetheless, I have added a 'not set' option in the colours, which all will be set to if you 'restore defaults', when I next upload the software (I'll do that shortly).

thx!

ok, so another thing I've been thinking about is the integration of rss feeds in search results. I'm a total cpu noob so I have no idea of the feasibility of this, but it'd be nice to be able to subscribe to rss feeds of search words or individual posters.

Baaderonixx, it's something I'd like to do, but it is really quite tricky to do without making a site come to a standstill... To be useful, you have to customise for each user (in the way you mention), which makes it very hard to keep data in memory (needed to make the site run quickly and smoothly), and in addition to this, you have RSS readers that automatically hit the server every 30 seconds checking for updates!

As I say, I'd like to do it in some fashion - it's pretty easy technically, but pretty hard to ensure the site continues to work well.

I know other sites have it, but then sites like Slashdot have something like eighty servers; whereas, ILX has one.

hey keith i don't think i have many but can u tell me how many sb's i ahve?

just curious

Sure, you have one.

Necessity of dumping the mob-rule-enabling Suggest Ban being discussed here:

Missin U <3 - lamentations for those felled by the SB

Yes, Morbs, especially this post.

yeah. I like Matt, but that's BS.

remove suggest ban

whoa what just happened

So I made the change - if you restore defaults on the customise site new answers page, you'll get normal un-styled links back.

mods vs mobs vs morbs

"View in Alphabetical Order". Lol.

Tho it might make me angry seeing it there all the time. Why?! WHHHYYYY?!

where is titles-in-rot13 option?

yeah i don't see the point of it

in case you only like threads that begin with a certain letter???

i like the bullet-changing thing a lot btw

TBH it was more an experiment to see if I could find more space for options. Happy to go with the majority on the alphabetical order thing, but I'll leave it for now - can always change it in a couple of days' time.

order by number of suggest bans generated

Although it was because Billy asked for it. And it's quite reasonable for people to request things that others might not find useful.

I don't mind it but I don't like it not in line with the threads ('cos I'm anal). What is the bullet point thing?

still think suggest excelsior will be a good idea

but it might not be reasonable to implement them all on a top level menu. xxp.

Ned, that's dependent on stylesheet... Which one are you using?

The bullet point thing is where it changes the bullet style to highlight threads you have recently read, but that have posts on them made after you read it.

Ledge, yeah maybe, as I say, most likely temporary. I'll find a way, it's just not completely obvious to me right now.

xp
OK, right, thanks, I'm using style.css

Ah, it may be because your browser hasn't picked up the latest stylesheet (it needed some changes), so you could try refreshing, or killing it and loading again... It's supposed to be in line with the bullets in the new answers list.

Nah, still not in line. I'm using the latest firefox.

S'ok though - I rather like the look of the new blueski...

Any chance of this annoying link for view in alphabetical order at the top being shoved down the bottom of the page out of the way?

Please read above.

Ned, is this what you see?

http://i30.tinypic.com/xdvark.png

Can this alphabetical option not just go in the preferences? I can't really see a widespread enough need for it to have it on New Answers at all times.

The real trick would be to have the alphabetical option for individual threads.

xp - no the 'View...' bit is over to the left.

Matt, see about ten posts up for this: Ideas for ILX

Ned, makes me wonder if your browser's caught up with the stylesheet yet - I'm using latest FF too here.

ah mine just caught up, blueski on camino. it just takes a few min.

AFAIC, Site New Answers is now perfect and awesome. Thanks Keith!

Yeah, looks awesome. Sorry about all my moaning and wailing yesterday. I was one big nerve ending, no reason for all that.

Thanks Keith, all these changes are awesome. And thank you too Kenan, for the kenan_style.css, this will be my stylesheet for a while. All these combined, it feels like a brand new ILX for me.

Cheers. Kenan, no need to worry about that.

cant the menu buttons just be smaller?

:)

since i am being a whiney bitch on the sb thread, wanted to tip my hat to keith for his work on the board overherre :) thanks!

link

Seriously, what value does this "alphabetical order" thing have. What nonsense.

Shh. It's done.

(But of course I personlly think it's frivolous at best, and could be moved to the bottom of the page at the least.)

11th burger is free!

^^^^^

i remember there was another feature i saw once elsewhere basically new answers would normally hide any threads that hasn't had an update since you last read it. would that be possible? saves me obsessively clicking the same threads even though they haven't had updates.

Check the bullet points, Ken:

OK so if you're logged in, then for any threads you have read, if there are subsequent new messages on that thread, the bullet on the new answers page will indicate it - on most stylesheets as an empty bullet, but as different colours on some. Happy for suggestions except penguins as to how it should be indicated though - for now, let me know if it works OK.

― Keith, Sunday, August 2, 2009 7:25 PM (4 days ago)

ooooh i see. will see if i can hide the thread altogether using a stylesheet.. my self control isn't so good so even if i see a funny bullet colour i'd totally just click on it so i'll need to lock myself out of those and throw away the keys

mmm actually that'd also hide all the threads that i have never looked at. okay i'll just have to train myself.

85 Active Users

Ha! Now we're just straight up admitting we're addicts right?

Is it only an impression or does this "threads you have read have another bullet" thing sometimes randomly (?) reset and forget the threads I visited? I don't think it's at midnight or it cancels when you haven't visited the thread for more than 24 hours or something, it seems a bit random. (if the reply is "every time I reboot the server" then could you please not reboot the server so often?) :-)

I'm sure that when I first found ILX threads were organised somewhere by folders - can't remember how exactly because it disappeared soon after, but one was something like '9/11 and everything after'. Does that page still exist? It was fun to browse.

That was when you could click a category for your thread - I think that was discontinued a while ago.

Yes. I remember 'Momus Momus Momus' was another category. I liked the system for a while, but it got messy as people would select inappropriate categories for the lols. We pretty much have a looser version of that now, with the microboards, right?

Did something change in the bookmarks settings? Clicking on 'old' threads - I think threads that were last updated a month ago or longer - I once bookmarked and that are updated now takes me to the top of the thread again, instead of to the last added message. Is this a change?

i miss categories, but i dont think we'll ever have them again

this isn't so much of an idea as it is a question, so...

why is it that some of the threads on the main ILE page say 'last updated X hours ago by YYYYY', but others only say 'last updated X hours ago' ???

like this

goin to africa, brb [Started by i want to marry a pizza (gbx) in June 2009, last updated 3 hours ago by ENBB] 3 new answers
rolling mma thread [Started by mad loli vamp bone (cankles) in January 2009, last updated 3 hours ago]
The worst word of these words [Started by sorry i poisoned u with nachos :( (HI DERE) in June 2009, last updated 4 hours ago] POLL results
Twitter C/D [Started by Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows in July 2008, last updated 4 hours ago by kshighway] 12 new answers

I'm still getting used to using Site New Answers - like kenan, I never used to use it - , which is why I've recently posted a couple of times on boards I'm not a part of (I don't know if they're supposed to feel like separate communities, but to me they (and the watercooler and localised threads) do, like 1p3, that's for Roxy and friends, for instance) - but I've found the Select the boards you want to see on Site New Answers preference, so I won't anymore.

When Keith resets something on the server, it starts rebuilding that info from that point onwards. So the threads that do show the Last updated by info have been updated since that point. I think. Xpost

And your example already disproves that theory, the one that was updated four hours ago doesn't show who did, but the three hours ago one does. Oh well.

stan, everyone is a part of 1p3

why would you block it out of your life

Afraid of the mods there :-(

j/k :-)

Just feel like separate communities, that's all.

this was probably already talked about somewhere but is there any way to modify the search user function to search only the permanent login name and not the ever-shifting display name. the ridic amount of display name puns makes searching for an actual poster's stuff impossible sometimes.

The 'displayName:"part of name inside parens"' search already does this.

hmm? is it something you have to enter in the search box to specify inside the parentheses? sry, i'm dense.

If I wanted to search for your posts, I'd click the "posts" radio button under the search box and type displayName:"call all destroyer"; I might order by newest posts first if I was looking for a recent post.

any chance of being able to order the list of boards on the board page?

guh dan i'm going to have more dumb questions later because i can't figure this out but want to leave work badly.

destroyer, you need to use the *lower* search form. just scroll down...