Mahz

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Mahz
Quick question: does the guild currently support Java Applet integration into its code?

@LegendBegins

Could I embed Java Applets? Sure.

They wouldn't run on [most] mobile devices nor many desktop browsers and I haven't seen one since 2006, but I could.

Why?

Hi =)

@Izzini Welcome

How did you stumble upon the Guild?

The fastest way to get started is probably to just find something that interests you (an interest check or a roleplay looking for more players) and follow along. I'm sure most GMs running a roleplay would like to help you get started.

If you have questions, you can PM me or really anyone.

Mahz's Dev Journal

That can be blamed on Advanced still recovering from the participant-loss from guildfall and the past year. Given the right setting, mindset and RP, we could probably easily reach that limit, mahz.

With fewer advanced players, it simply takes longer between each such IC post appearing.

@Ellri

Right, I'm not saying the 150k limit is too high. Just noticed how much people like to hit it with garbage.

Either way, it's not a big deal. 150kb of "" compresses to like 12 characters in the database.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Mind only triggering that when the character count breaches 90k?

@Captain Jordan

Good idea. Making it kick in at 75% of upper bound would be a good solution.

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by Mahz>

I honestly wouldn't mind some more options for the ratings system. Maybe some fun ones like "cookies" or "props". Even a dislike-esque one would be fun. Though, I can understand if the last one would cause some problems for some members. If it isn't a viable option, maybe a "wow"-esque one that is given when a post is so great that the like rating isn't good enough.

@Altered Tundra

An idea for a "negative" rating is "You need a hug". I don't really like "Dislike"/"Disagree", but I kinda like funner negative ones.

I agree that too many ratings or too many similar ratings just becomes cumbersome, though.

but but... that one's too joyful, @Captain Jordan... That has far too much of a useful purpose!

@Mahz: Is it by design that the @Mention buttons remove any non-character space between the position the code appears and any characters, including new lines?

@Ellri

It's not by design, I just haven't touched it since I hacked it together. I probably just need to remove an unnecessary string.trim() to fix this behavior in the interim. It's still on my list to make the @mention inject wherever your cursor was.

Also, I noticed poor user-experience when you have the editor in preview-mode and then try to click @mention/quote buttons. #willfix

Finally, when trying to debug a search issue last week, I noticed that 100% of all posts with a length between 90k and 150k characters (the upper limit) were pure spam. And I don't mean spam-forum spam, but rather people in random OOC topics, off-topics, test forum topics, etc. just copy and pasting garbage until they hit the upper limit. Usually in a hider tag so when someone clicked it, they'd be greeted by a bunch of "".

Maybe I can fix that by adding a reminder above the editor to not inject garbage into the database for the lulz.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Shienvien: I attempted to dampen it. If that bothers you, does the white text of posts bother you too?

Should it be more of a white-grey?
Should it be more of a white-grey?
Should it be more of a white-grey?

I still have plans to introduce a button that toggles to a dark-text-on-white-background theme. Apparently the vast majority of people prefer it and find it more readable. It wouldn't be too hard.

Latest Push:

- When you click the Subscribe/Unsubscribe buttons on a topic, you are no longer redirected back to the first page of the topic.

Man, what are some other gross user-experience destroyers I need to fix?

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Genkai I added a dinky "← Fresh" indicator to roleplays/checks newer than 24 hours.



Maybe it helps you skim for new threads until I build a sort-by-newly-created toggle.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Eventually, a distinction between searching for posts and searching for topics would be nice.

@Captain Jordan

Oh yeah, forgot to mention: This is purely a search for posts right now. I still need to add topics to the search.

The hard part is done, though (integrating with a search indexer).

Mahz's Dev Journal

Latest push:

- [Experimental] Introduced search
- Added convenience button at the top of each topic for "Search in this topic" and "Find my posts in this topic":

- Posts are synced to the indexer every 10 minutes
- It's under construction

Lemme know if you encounter issues, particularly if the search results are incorrect or not what you expected. I'll clean up the UI soon and add some missing search parameters.

Search only returns 50 results right now and doesn't paginate. I'll add pagination, I just wanted to launch a basic demo to see if there are any issues with my syncing system.

Mahz's Dev Journal

I'm caught up reading this topic now. I always read every post.

I spent an hour responding to various posts and came up with a bunch of bulleted thoughts, but I don't want to steer this topic so far off course again by pondering things so far in the distance.

There are various issues brought up in the past few pages too. Like @Awson said he can't edit titles anymore. I put these on my list. I'll rekindle the various discussions and yall's points when I get ready to cross those bridges. I know it's unfair of me to braindump a stream of consciousness into this thread like I did pages ago and then not respond to the torrent of feedback.

Anyways, I'm going to launch a basic search system tonight. I'd just like to prime yall and say it has kind of a shitty user experience right now. 95% of my time was spent on the technical implementation. Search is pretty hard.