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CmdrTaco (1)

CmdrTaco
  {malda} {at} {slashdot.org}
http://cmdrtaco.net/
I have powers. Secret powers.

Journal of CmdrTaco (1)

D2 Updates

[ #200084 ]
Thursday April 03, @03:33PM
User Journal
In-Place Posting is now live for all logged in users. Hopefully there are no surprises. We've found a number of very tiny bugs, but nothing show stopping. We'll leave the link up to the 'classic' reply form for a few weeks. Next week anonymous coward will get the new posting form... hopefully there are no surprises with that.

A few new keybindings aren't documented yet... v (end) t (top) [] change upper threshold and ,. change bottom threshold. Also 'r' opens the new reply box, m opens the mod total thingee.

The only major complaint so far is that the design changes consume a lot more whitespace. I have mixed feelings on the subject, but am aiming to strike a balance. We noticed 2 very clear places where the whitespace is excessive and hopefully that will be fixed RSN. But on the other hand, making deep threads visually clear, and drawing some attention to the 'reply' buttons is beneficial to everyone, so bare with us as we work to strike some sort of balance.


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  • But on the other hand, making deep threads visually clear, and drawing some attention to the 'reply' buttons is beneficial to everyone, so bare with us as we work to strike some sort of balance.

    Sorry, Rob, but this design absolutely hideous and unreadable. Is there any reason to think people were unable to find the reply without a giant blob?

    • I wouldn't put it as strongly as that. I do like the better visibility on deep threads. I don't care much for the rounded links, they don't look like links or buttons, they look like informational messages - the sort of thing we train ourselves to ignore =)

      Buttons need to be three dimensional in some way to include the mental tie-in with the real world where we push things in with our fingers. Links need to stand out as a link and not just text. Knocked out text on a gray rounded box doesn't quite do th
    • I don't mind the size of the reply button, but I wish the reply to the main article had the same look and feel as the reply to the comments. The reply to the main article is still as hard to find as ever.

      The reply to the comments is now easier to find, but it wasn't hard to find before.
      • I had this exact discussion with our designer not just a couple hours ago. It's on the TODO list.
    • Yes actually- the people who emailed me and asked where the reply button was ;) I have a hard time buying your 'hideous and unreadable' argument. Perhaps 'Different' and 'We fear change' is more accurate? besides the larger reply buttons and the box, it looks almost exactly the same, so if THIS is hideous, it must have been pretty terrible originally anyway!
      • I also agree that "hideous and unreadable" is too harsh a critique. That said, I'm not excessively fond of the latest design change. The borders are quite sloppy looking, and there's far too much whitespace around comments. Also, the "reply to this" and "parent" button-links are too big for my taste. I like the basic style, but I certainly would be disappointed if some of the padding went away. :)
      • And user-configurable stylesheets with community-contributed styles are in the works so that people can skin Slashdot however they like? :)

        The new look feels bloated, like Slashdot posts are displayed in PowerPoint rather than Notepad.
         
        • Isn't that sort of thing what greasemonkey is for?

          We learned a long time ago that if you provide slashdot readers with 100 options, 1 person will use all 100 of them, 4 people will use 5 of them, 10 people will complain that we are missing option #101 (but if we add that option, only 1 of those 10 will use it). And 95 people never change anything from the default settings ever.

          So in general, we now try to err on the side of 'solve it for the most people the best you can'. Stylesheets are a fun idea, b

      • So looking at the end result of an expanded thread, it's not actually all that bad. But going from a single-line unexpanded comment to an expanded comment which now has all these borders and whitespace around it is quite jarring. And the reply/parent buttons just suck up vertical space - if you put them into the bottom of the grey frame they'd use a whole lot less space.
        • I'm considering a footer- but I don't know how much space that actually saves... a few pixels sure, but at the expense of readability.

          Just give us a few weeks. We've tweaked a bunch of changes into the system and we'll get a few more in and hopefully we'll find a compromise that makes everyone happy. Or at least happIER. You can't ever make 100% of the people happy 100% of the time.

  • So far, I like what D2 is doing. It isn't perfect, there are bugs, and some things I don't like, but I recognize it's a work-in-progress. As long as changes continue to happen and it doesn't stagnate, I'm happy to use something unfinished. And it is definitely huge progress compared to what we had before. Right on!

    One question: I used to be able to see the moderation scores on a given comment by clicking the comment's direct link (the "(#12345)" after the time). I don't see that anymore. Am I just mis

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by pudge (3605) *

      One question: I used to be able to see the moderation scores on a given comment by clicking the comment's direct link (the "(#12345)" after the time). I don't see that anymore. Am I just missing something, was it forgotten, is it on the to-do list, or was it taken away for a reason?
      Click the "Score" for the comment! Or if it is the current comment, "m".
      • Ah, I see now! That makes sense, and is a good idea, too. Doesn't waste space and works for all comments. Thanks for the tip!
        • Yeah i routinely had to open up threads just to answer a question about moderation... this change is a huge improvement. Although we probably should have a key bound to closing the dialog box. I imagine ESC is a bad key to try to eat in browsers... anyone know?
          • I was thinking of the same thing, and I think 'm' could be used as a toggle. But it is a little tricky since I used the existing prefs API, so we might want to make a general keybinding for ALL modal dialogs, but we also might want to wait until I generalize the keybindings code ... etc.
            • If you want a global keybinding that's good for this sort of thing, I'd suggest 'x'. It's got a mnemonic in "exit"; it's unlikely to conflict with any other mnemonic; it's analogous with the icon used for the GUI "Close button"; it's near the WASD cluster.
              • I like that. 'm' could still be used for a toggle for this specific case, but 'x' as a general key for the same purpose is a nice idea.
                • yeah i wouldn't want to use 'm' because that would be confusing if we tried to map it into the prefs boxes.

  • ...I have to say that it looks like you're trying to make D1 less and less pleasant in an attempt to get everyone onto D2. I'm not saying that's actually it, it's just the experience seems to get worse over time as many of the features we know and love are removed (moderation score information without Javascript, simple indenting, long comments being displayed if we ask for them to be in our preferences, etc.) Meanwhile Web2.0 features are implemented haphazardly for a group that has actively rejected them

    • We're really not trying to change D1, but the fact is that almost nobody uses it any more. And unfortunately in some cases, since D1 & 2 share some code, some changes to improve D2 affect D1. It's unintentional, but inevitable. We're working to make the Slashdot experience the best we can for as many people as possible, and for edge cases (people who reject ajax for example) we don't always meet their needs perfectly. It's not malicious, it's just a law of returns- making 90% happy takes X hours. M
      • Actually I think it takes X hours to make 80% happy... 2X hours to satisfy 88%... 3X to get up to 88.8%...

      • Ok, needless to say I'm not happy about that response. Suggesting, as you appear to, that the solution to those of us who are finding problems with Slashdot's UI, is to go and start our own Slashdot-like website is just insulting, it doesn't really answer the issues. And I must admit I'm having a hard time believing that "almost nobody" is using D1. I suspect D2's popular - given it's the default - amongst casual users, which presumably make up the vast majority of Slashdot's hits, but then again didn't yo

        • I'm not suggesting you start a new site... I'm suggesting you submit a PATCH ;)

          I'm not sure about the reparent highly rated comments thing. Are you in D1 or D2? That option does nothing in D2 atm- and it's not really on the TODO list since the whole point of the dynamic thresholding was to make kludgy crap like that unnecessary...

          • Oh, ok. Well, the way you described the long-comments issue, it sounded like you were suggesting it was impossible, so I didn't think patches were under consideration. But, ok, good :)

            I don't know about D2, but I'm using D1, and have "Re-parent" turned off. And it was working until recently, though I can't honestly say if it stopped working this morning or three days ago.

            And just to add to the confusion, I just tried it again on the exact same article and can't reproduce the issue. The comment in quest [slashdot.org]

            • The caching thing is a hard problem that I doubt anyone can patch cleanly. Basically, we pre-cache every comment you see... but we cache just the X bytes that 99.9% of readers want. What we found is that users who turned on that option and hit discussions with really long comments caused the DB to seize because none of those comments were cached. It really screwed things up and it had to go for flat out performance reasons. I doubt it'll come back. We ran the numbers and picked a size that fit like 90%
                • It was set at a number that was large enough to fit the vaaaast majority of slashdot comments. We like, looked a histogram and stuff. It was all like mathy and stuff. How about THIS compromise: turn on javascript and enjoy the glorious 21st century :)
                    • I don't click at all. Pressing S and D navigates down and through threads. When I get to the end, it loads more comments. Setting thresholds how I like them lets me see more or less comments initially, and set how they appear (either abbreviated or not). It's faster, easier to navigate, and doesn't require me to take my hand off the keyboard. Well, except to moderate. Which we'll probably address someday soon ;)

                    • My objection is having to keep clicking around to read a conversation.

                      This is what I "get" the least about the complaints: I do LESS clicking around -- keybindings or not -- in D2. I get more of the discussion I want to see right up front. Be that as it may ...

                      ... the idea that the comment size limit might be waaaay too small shouldn't be exactly hard to believe.

                      The limit is actually pretty large: 4K. Raising the limit to anything still-reasonable would include very few additional comments. So yes, it is very hard to believe the limit is waaaaay too small. It is not hard to believe it could be larger.

                      Turning on Javascript will not help. Firstly, because it already is turned on (except when I browse remotely via Lynx, but that doesn't work any more because of the cookies issue)

                      Since when does lynx not work anymore? And what problems with cookie

                    • Yeah flat mode is the only thing that we're flat out not supporting ATM in D2. It's not out of the question, but I wanted to get all the other details taken care of before we used it- D2 completely replaces nested & threaded modes in every way, but flat mode has nothing.

                      I think that the way that people use flat mode is just for chronological comments. You can navigate the discussion that way using Q/E if you change your comment retrieval method to retrieve-by-date, but that is non obvious, and not a

                    • This is what I "get" the least about the complaints: I do LESS clicking around -- keybindings or not -- in D2. I get more of the discussion I want to see right up front. Be that as it may ...

                      When Nested mode is working, it's hard to see how you can click around less unless mind reading becomes part of the system. Once the page is loaded, you don't have to click at all except under two common circumstances and one uncommon one: the two common are going to the next page of comments, and replying to a comme

                    • A fundamental problem for a lot of folks is that they don't understand that D2 DOES nested mode just fine. There are 2 thresholds: "hide" and "abbreviate". If you pull the 2 thresholds together, you are in nested mode. It may not be blazingly obvious, but it is documented in the FAQ at least, and it seems to me at least that 30 seconds of clicking on the widget would teach people that. With all of this you get so much more too... like the ability to get the top rated comments on your first load, and the

                    • No. 4K is large enough that I know for a fact that such comments are relatively rare, because we checked the existing comments in the database.
                      Are you calling me a liar?
                      Yes. That is exactly what I am doing. /me rolls eyes

                      I am simply (I thought obviously) saying that your experience, if it is as you describe, is atypical.
                    • We've started to address this in some ways- as you retrieve new comments, the old ones 'fade' a little in the titlebar to make it easier to retain what you've seen or not. The truth is that I just can't come up with a good way to maintain a read/unread status for a million users on millions of comments, and to do it in a performance effective way. Under D1 the problem was mostly unsolvable- under D2 it's probably do-able if we stored a client side cookie maintaining perhaps the last couple hundred comment
                    • this just doesn't work in a threaded forum. We spent a bunch of time trying to figure out a way to do it. It's on the TODO list, but it's not at the top of it. It's a surprisingly difficult problem at this scale.
                    • yeah this is just part of why we've never addressed it. Determining what is read or not is "hard" in a web UI (you can guess in D2, and know for sure if the user uses keybindings tho). THis, coupled with the technical issue of maintaining the massive volume of data (we've discussed this btw, we can't just use 1 datestamp per story. it's just not gonna cut it in a threaded discussion). There are SO many variables here that it's the sort of thing that we're simply not gonna get right the first couple time

    • it's just the experience seems to get worse over time as many of the features we know and love are removed (moderation score information without Javascript

      Almost everyone uses JavaScript. This actually has nothing to do with D1/D2 specifically: this is just us saving you a page load to check a comment's mod information. I suppose we could make it so that people who aren't using D2 can still get the information the old way (CmdrTaco can direct me to do that), but I think you're probably in the minority, even of D1 users, who thinks this is a bad thing.

      simple indenting

      Do you mean the UI changes from last week? If not, I don't know what you're referring to. If that is wha

  • Add me to the list that doesn't like the knew look either. When I first saw it I thought that there must be something broken in my browser. Maybe I just need to get used to it, but I am having trouble following threads in the form. The boxes are distracting, where lined up columns of posts are just like follwing the indentation in blocks of code. Anyway, thanks for trying. I hope that you tweak the the look quite a bit more, though.
  • There should be two viewing options -- one for normal (non-moderator) and another for moderation. If you want to encourage moderation of unmoderated comments instead of moderation of comments already moderated it is essential. The moderation default should also default to Oldest and Full or whatever view is everything.

    If it annoys me to have to change my regular view but I do it anyway I figure there are many others who don't bother and just moderate what their chosen view displays.

    With Firefox 3.0pre the "
    • This is actually something we've debated on many occasions. The needs of the moderator are different than the needs of the regular user. Unfortunately I really don't want moderation to be an obtrusive experience- so if I adjust thresholds and change sort ordering for people who have mod points, they are going to get annoyed because when they get mod points, Slashdot sucks.

      The alternative is simply to hope that users change their thresholds when they get mod points to look at those Score:0 and Score:-1 c

      • I sent you a screen shot.

        Regarding the moderation preferences -- I'm glad it's already been debated. Maybe a good compromise would be to have an option to set your view to full (right next to "You have X Moderator Points! Use 'em or lose 'em!").

        Perhaps as you suggest though D2 will take care of all of this.
    • Credit should also go to wes- the functionality is Pudge's, the look is wes's. The 2 forces combine really nicely.
    • I was just about to post exactly the same comment, when I read your reply. I totally agree; the buttons can definitely stand to be moved to the title bar. It'd make things more compact, and make it look much better. Depending on the design of the button, of course.

      Otherwise, I love the new in-line comment system. Much more convenient than the previous system.

    • I'd like it better if the reply/parent buttons would be in the title bar of the comment. Now they just eat too much vertical space. Especially with short comments.
      <aol>Me too!</aol>
    • I'd have to disagree. Reply and Moderate appear at the END of a comment, because you can't reply intelligently or moderate intelligently until AFTER you have read the comment. I know that this eats up some vertical real estate, but it's not logical to have the actionable items displayed BEFORE the context that you need to act upon.

      There's always a debate between minimalism where every pixel matters, and logical clear design. We absolutely can tighten up this whole UI, but it's just more intuitive to ha

        • I would make the case that *slashdot* users are used to it being at the bottom since that's where it has been for 10.5 years now... but then again, you could also make the case that they are also used to less whitespace, and I'm really trying to make the case that the extra whitespace is beneficial ;)
      • At this point, only a very tiny percentage of our users are using D1, so while I understand that it might need some tweaking, my concerns are mainly for the 90-95% of our traffic using D2.

        I coudl go either way on the box thickness thing. I think the chunkier box line is nice- it sets the comment apart. If anything, I don't like that the in-line post box doesn't stand out a bit more. I think maybe that answer to that might be to put the whole thing into a light grey background... then it would really st

            • I've just never under stood the whole 'nested mode is perfect and D2 can't do it'. If you just pull the top slider down, and increase the # of comments retreieved when you load the page, you basically get nested mode. Except when you get to the end of the page, you click 'more' to continue. Yeah, you retrieve the comments in multiple requests, but that's just good manners- giving readers a 1 meg page of comments when they only usually read the first couple dozen is bad for them too, to say nothing of mer
                • Remember that by using the new shortcut keys [] and ,. you can raise and lower the thresholds for abbreviate and hidden comments. This makes this whole process far more efficient.

                  I'm not happy with the X Hidden comments handling yet. I'm certainly open to ideas. The problem is that comments have a lot of states, and it's "Hard" to make an intuitive UI that lets you cycle between all of them.

    • The '>' indicates the current comment. You can use the keybindings (WASD mainly) to navigate threads very efficiently. It, along iwth the 'L' looking things that indicate depth still need a little work I think just to tighten everything up. We only have one user type to test out- anonymous coward. If the new in-line posting works for them, then the only peop

      Good point about button consistency. We plan to unify the buttons as best we can, and the 'If you have difficulty' text is going away in a few

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