LegendBegins

Mahz's Dev Journal

I'll finish the UI and roll it out when I wake up sometime.

@Mahz

Change of plans - I ate a bad hamburger patty at a superbowl party last night and I've been suffering all day. I'll resume working on it this weekend. @Captain Jordan: Good ideas. I'll think about them this weekend. @BBeast: Good call, that's one of the reasons I split up the topic & convo systems for the rewrite. Easier to lock down all convos with one line of code (you must be a participant to read/post in a convo) rather than have this overloaded topics-for-convos system. @LegendBegins: Yeah, I'd like to push updates to the browser. Maybe I can keep it simple. @Kirra: Aw. Poor [@Mr_pink] :( - Thanks, I'll fix.

@Mahz

I'm sorry to hear that, Mahz. Take it easy.

Mahz's Dev Journal

In regards to the coming notifications system, if you plan to implement a live update system (which would likely be taxing on your servers), I would recommend an option to toggle live updates off, for those who wish to conserve data on their phone plans.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Also, I'm moving the userbit for each post from the left side to the top. _{Wasn't the guild like that before guildfall?} It makes it easier for me to extend the userbit with information since there's more room. It's actually implemented on the current site if you shrink the width of your window: I bent over backwards to get that working. Making all userbits display on top will simplify the code and reduce potential rendering issues across differently sized devices (once I'm ready to toggle on mobile-view support). If enough people are significantly opinionated about where the userbit should go, I can eventually turn it into a configurable setting. And, in other news, I'm playing with some much more readable typography, sizing, and spacing for the guild's posts. Helvetica (default font for the CSS framework I'm using) is just so hard to read. Captain Jordan pointed this out a year ago, but you can barely even see when posts are emboldened. _{← Did u notice?}

@Mahz

Excellent job, Mahz. The userbit bar at the top will also provide a perfect location for the "current character" information/status consideration. Though the above opinions do have a good point, I believe it should remain when the width is restricted, as to prevent extremely narrow posts. A customizable view would be convenient, though I feel bad that you put so much effort into this.

Mahz's Dev Journal

I haven't caught up reading this thread yet.

As a side note, I'm actually curious how far we can nest posts. Anyone care to give it a try?

@Captain Jordan

The Reply button makes a request to the "View Raw" endpoint, wraps it in [quote=@<Username>][/quote], and appends it to the editor, so it's far from being smart enough to strip embedded quotes. I would need to edit the bbcode parser itself. It's a problem because my goal is for people to use the Reply button incessantly without thinking about it. The current implementation gives you the entirety of nested quote context. What do you think of having Reply and Quote&Reply buttons on posts? - Reply just does the @Mention-injection for you. Simply serves the purpose of indicating who you're responding to and sends them a notification so they're aware of your response. Ideally so simple that people will use it to respond to the post above them where you wouldn't want to quote. - Quote&Reply is like the current Reply button except it contains no nested quotes. Or includes just one nested level but collapses them into some glyph like "[Snipped Captain Jordan quote]" (i.e. in particular, @mentions need to be removed from inner quotes). As we talking about before, I can extend the quote bbcode with [quote=Captain Jordan post=42]...[/quote] so that quotes link to the target post. That way, if you do want to see the nested quotes, it's just one click away. But 2+ levels of nested quotes by default is just awful and generally not what people want. Also, perhaps I can support a special empty quote like [quote=@<Username> post=42][/quote] to drop a simple one-line glyph like "In reply to @Captain Jordan, <link to post>:". The above Reply button could inject that. In other words, I really want to lean hard on the @mention system once I extend the notification system to support it. Like reddit's orangered envelope, @mention notifications will kinda represent your TODO-list of posts to reply to. The lack of awareness when someone replies to you is probably the most unforgivable feature of legacy forum software. New platforms like Vanilla Forum and Xenforo are finally addressing this.

@Mahz

I like this idea. I think we can all agree that nesting all quotes by default isn't the most desired system.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Regarding co-GMs, in whatever field the GM will use in future to select co-GMs, there should be an option to toggle on and off permissions for co-GMs. This would cater for both GMs who want to share power with the co-GMs and for GMs who only want the co-GMs as labelled helpers and want to retain the power for themselves. An edit-backup needs to be time-based, or at least have a minimum time before clearing the history. This would prevent the rogue co-GM/moderator from simply spamming, say, 10 edits to wipe the edit history. The time also needs to be adequate for the fault to be detected and fixed in time. 24 hours may not be enough, for someone could easily spend a day or two away from the Guild. For the sake of revisions, it may also be useful to store a number of prior edits for a longer period of time (or permanently). However, I'm not sure what kind of a drain this may be on the Guild's database resources. I'm just throwing ideas around here. If you do grant GMs the power over posts in their thread (something which could possibly be abused), then a system which puts the post in a large hider would be safest, for it allows the post to be hidden from view but still available to be read if need be. But a Report button to call a mod to a particular post would be a good idea too. How about give the mods the power to put posts in large hiders? Another tool in their toolbox. -------------------- Oh, in regard to the current discussion on the pages, would a Go To Page # field/button (inside the thread) be too much of a problem? There is no interface option for going to a post in the middle of the thread, and asking users to edit the url is not user friendly. But I agree that we don't really need page numbers from the forum view.

@BBeast

I agree with these opinions. While you can already do so in the URL, it shouldn't be too difficult to create a button that links to whichever page is entered.

Mahz's Dev Journal

right click. select "copy link location". Paste it into address bar. add this to the end of it: ?page=22 That'll get you to page 22. However, when a more concise unread post system is implemented, then it might be useful to have a "jump to last unread post"-function

@Ellri

What I'm suggesting is a shorter way of getting to it! I'm lazy, ok?

@The Silver Paladin

I agree with

having too many ways to access a topic from the topic pages/subscriptions will only clutter things up...

@Ellri

This^. Adding a feature like that would be largely unnecessary. I see what you're describing [page 1, 2... 29 last], but it currently isn't a highly requested or desired feature, and it's not exactly a necessary update, just so you can go to the second last page without making an extra click. Not many people want to go to the page right before the last one, instead of the last one.

Mahz's Dev Journal

A quote limit should quite honestly be introduced. It could get messy if people don't delete nested quotes. Though, I'm still a proponent of returning to the old quote system, where it only quotes the new content, and not the quote within a quote.

Mahz's Dev Journal

It might be far easier to have a separate field from the post field that is titled something like "Characters involved". Initially, that could merely be a text field, but later it might be linked up to more complex features. A theoretical bonus from such might be for both/all post authors to be credited for collab posts.

@Ellri

The only problem I see with that is that it feels virtually synonymous with the character tab. From my view, the ability to switch between characters would be incredibly advantageous for many RPs.

@LegendBegins

Well, yes and no. The character tab shows the actual character sheets. The little box we described earlier here would simply be a text field where characters are named. In several RPs we've been involved with in the past, we've had bolded headers on the collab posts specifying who was involved and with what characters. Of course, such a field could be used for other purposes too, like in an RP where time is a core factor more than it is in most. Then one could specify when each post starts/ends.

@Ellri

I think it should be available to put anything you want in that slot. But it is quite advantageous.

@LegendBegins

I like this idea, although Mahz, if you do implement it, can you please make it's appearance conditional on the existence of text in that field? As a side note, I'm actually curious how far we can nest posts. Anyone care to give it a try?

@Captain Jordan

There's probably not a system limit, which could create a problem.

Mahz's Dev Journal

It might be far easier to have a separate field from the post field that is titled something like "Characters involved". Initially, that could merely be a text field, but later it might be linked up to more complex features. A theoretical bonus from such might be for both/all post authors to be credited for collab posts.

@Ellri

The only problem I see with that is that it feels virtually synonymous with the character tab. From my view, the ability to switch between characters would be incredibly advantageous for many RPs.

@LegendBegins

Well, yes and no. The character tab shows the actual character sheets. The little box we described earlier here would simply be a text field where characters are named. In several RPs we've been involved with in the past, we've had bolded headers on the collab posts specifying who was involved and with what characters. Of course, such a field could be used for other purposes too, like in an RP where time is a core factor more than it is in most. Then one could specify when each post starts/ends.

@Ellri

I think it should be available to put anything you want in that slot. But it is quite advantageous.

Mahz's Dev Journal

It might be far easier to have a separate field from the post field that is titled something like "Characters involved". Initially, that could merely be a text field, but later it might be linked up to more complex features. A theoretical bonus from such might be for both/all post authors to be credited for collab posts.

@Ellri

The only problem I see with that is that it feels virtually synonymous with the character tab. From my view, the ability to switch between characters would be incredibly advantageous for many RPs.