Mahz

Mahz's Dev Journal

Just looking at the friends list on the front page and I can see that eventually that side bar will be filled with various features and notifications. It's already pretty long and I know that some forms may not be used all the time.

Thinking ahead, would collapsible section work? And could the friends list maybe move up to a button next to the PMs and Subs, working like a dropbox to show your online friends?

@NuttsnBolts

Agreed. It's getting crowded pretty quickly and I'll have to address it soon. There's plenty of things I can do from shrinking the components vertically to combining the "Latest Roleplays" and "Latest Checks" components into a single component with two tabs.

The problem we've noted with collapsing forum sections is that it doesn't last.

Some people might desire to hide certain sections/elements of the guild on a more permanent basis.

@Ellri

Good points, that's really just an oversight. Right now collapse info is saved a temporary cookie that lasts as long as a login when you don't check "Remember Me?". I should refactor it to be remembered as long as your login info is going to be remembered in your browser.

Mahz's Dev Journal

With 225+ users online at the moment, I think I may have caused a sudden influx of friend adds. :p

Would it be right to say that features posted here can be spread amongst the community? Or are they still not meant for the masses yet?

@SilverRain

I only announce new features in this dev thread because I know only a few people will see the announcement. By checking up on this thread you are part of an implicit "Beta".

The rest of the community figures it out over time just from clicking around and experimenting.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Found a small bug.

using middle-click on the Private convos part of "Home / Private Convos" at the top when in the New conversation window gives an output of a classic white tab with the text "Method Not Allowed".

@Ellri

That's funny. It links to /convos instead of /me/convos. Apparently that link never worked. #willfix

So I'm currently Invisible right now... What would appear next to my name if someone has added me as their Friend?

@SilverRain

Just checked for testing purposes, @SilverRain.
Next to your name, nothing new. on the friends list, you are listed as online.

@Ellri

Thanks. That's a bug. The friends list should obey the same invisibility rules seen in posts.

Can't say we do. But that's just us.

@Mahz. Quick question, is there a way to access the full friends list, or can people at this stage only see the last ten on the list who are/were online?

@Ellri

Just hasn't been build yet.

@Mahz
Your URL Parser is too effective. It overrides code tags.
see here:
cdn.collider.com/wp-content/..

EDIT:
One other minor thing that would be useful on subscriptions page is the ability to go to first page/post of OoC/CS tabs.

@Ellri

Yeah, the URL parser runs after my BBCode parser and is unaware of that system. It will entail another clever hack to address that behavior.

Not sure what to do about the subscriptions page. Limited on space. Might replace the "Go to latest post" button with "Go to unread post" at least since that's what people want 90% of the time. When I do that, might think of a minimal way to support your request.

Mahz's Dev Journal

- The browser will expel drafts from its LocalStorage once they are 6 hours old to avoid accumulation.

What about users who occasionally leave a page open for three days and expect it to still be there through browser restarts and what not? Never mind me unless I raise alarm, though - as long as your system for remembering posts doesn't interfere with my system for remembering posts (which literally brings back snippets from over a year ago in case I left any hanging without posting them) we're all good.

@Shienvien

That's a good issue to bring up.

Right now, how I have it working is that once you start editing a textbox, the textbox enters an autosave loop (every 20 sec) until the post is submitted or the tab is closed. If you leave that tab open for a week, then the post should be autosaved that entire time so that by the time you finally submit it, it'll be in LocalStorage for 6 more hours after your attempt to submit it.

Hi I'm new

Welcome!

Looks like you had no trouble getting started.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@The Grey Warden Have you tried forcing a cache reload in your browser?

refreshyourcache.com/en/cache

RP Tag Requests

@Ellri Thanks for reminding me about this thread. I need to port some tags into the system. It's a bit skimpy.

I'm not sure what the ideal is, though.

With more tags comes more accurate tagging, more personalization, more expressiveness, a finer point.

But more tags also dilute any sort of filtering/search system. Filters become more sparse and hit fewer results. Imagine the extreme where you have a system of 100 topics and 300 tags, and each topic has 3 unique tags. Might as well just browse the topics sequentially.

However, I do have one idea. I'm getting some deja vu, but it's been a while since we spoke on this.

- We keep the guild's "official"/core tag set very compact. Only hit the broad notes. Free/Casual/Advanced. 1x1/SmallGroup/LargerGroup. Only the core guild systems and high-level distinctions. Arena/Dice. Focus on the objective distinctions and avoid genre where possible. Uncontroversial but general tags.
- Force every roleplay to have some minimum number of these core tags.
- For the rest of the tags, simply let the community create them. Mass Effect. DC Comics. Jupiter. Birthing. ReverseBirthing. Whatever - It suddenly doesn't matter how specific and niche and sparse these community tags are. Implement some basic controls so people can't just go apeshit and create 100 tags. Or maybe something more interesting like every week the community votes on the next community tag we add to the system.

Maybe each roleplay must have at least 3 core tags and then they can pick up to 3 more of any other tag. The core tags are displayed on the form how they currently are, and the community tags are just organized in one big multi-select combobox similar to:



Just an idea. I need some sleep.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Ellri @Mentions should now inject at cursor.

Can you confirm that it works for you?

Be on the lookout for any new bugs though. Every time I even open the file that contains the hack that is my custom BBCode editor, something breaks.

Mahz's Dev Journal

I have a basic post autosave/draft system working on my computer.

- I use your browser's LocalStorage system (100% offline) so that the draft of a post will persist through server errors. In other words, the posts are stored in your browser, not on the server.
- Most browsers have 5mb of LocalStorage capacity which is quite a lot. For comparison, the guild's max post length is 0.15mb. So a modern browser can store 33 max-length posts until it runs out of space.

This is how it works so far:

- When you land on a page with a post editor (new roleplay, new topic, new reply), the forum will check your browser's LocalStorage to see if it has a draft saved for this topic. If it does, then it simply loads the draft into the editor and then focuses the editor so that you know something happened. From there, you can continue working on it or submit it as usual.
- Once you start typing in an editor, the editor will begin saving your draft to LocalStorage every 20 seconds.
- Whenever you successfully submit a post to the server, your browser will automatically delete the backing draft in your browser. This doesn't happen until your browser actually gets confirmation from the server.
- The browser will expel drafts from its LocalStorage once they are 6 hours old to avoid accumulation.
- I've added a /drafts URL to the guild that you can visit to manually sift through any drafts your browser has saved.

The end result of this system is that the forum will seem to magically remember your unsubmitted posts for up to 6 hours since your last modification to each post. Whether your browser crashes or the guild crashes or your laptop runs out of battery, your progress will be preserved.

I hope.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Will a Friendship tab/box also be added to our profiles?

@BBeast

Sure, though what did you have in mind for its contents?

The sidebar only shows up to 10 friends. Once I create a dedicated friends page for managing your friendships, I'll add a "View More" link to the bottom of that sidebar that takes you there.

I'm also going to recreate the Stalker Feed that the vBulletin guild had where you can see a feed of your friends' activity. We gave it a lot of shit back then because it was weirdly public (other people could see your personalized Stalker Feed), but it's a heavily requested feature. It allows you to add all the people you care about to your friends list and then periodically check the feed to see if there's any shenanigans waiting for you.