Quick Note on Site Repairs
Hey everyone!
As I mentioned two weeks ago, we’re looking to fix some of the longstanding bugs at OT. That process began last week, and will probably continue for the next few weeks. Today, however, we are entering the period that our WordPress sensei CK describes as “possible fender bender” territory: that is, over the next few days you may (or may not) find the system more or less buggy than usual.
Which requires me to ask two things of you, dear readers:
1. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience over the next few days. It is our sincere hope that once we are done we will have a site that is a more pleasurable experience for you.
2. If you notice something not working right that was working before — or if you are noticing a bug you hated is now mercifully gone — please let us know, either in the comments or by email. (rtodkelly at mac.com is probably the best address to use.)
Thanks in advance for your patience, and for your help in making this site better.
Yours with platonic cuddles and kisses,
– Tod
Just a note to CK that the comment-caching thing seems actually worse than before to me, in both logged-in and logged-out modes (and it also is currently difficult to determine your logged-in/out status – for example, right now as I leave this comment, I appear to be logged in; but I do not have the logged-in toolbar at the top and cannot make it appear with a refresh, which I used to be able to do).Report
Yep – had to turn it off – plus now we have brand new problems – it’s how these things go sometimes, sorry to say. There are some very peculiar issues with the site set-up, though we’re not quite in nuke from orbit just to be sure territory. I’ll try turning it back on, with fingers crossed.
That’s interesting though – you had to refresh in order to make the “admin bar” show after you logged in?Report
I used to have to do that, and it used to work. It was annoying, but it was just one extra step.
When I try it now, I don’t get the Admin bar (I still don’t have it, even now) though I do appear to be logged in.Report
Yep, admin bar gone for me, too – and getting unexpected comment thread functions, too. Am curious, in fact, to see where this comment ends up.Report
we’re not quite in nuke from orbit just to be sure territory.
Keep going, you’ll get there.
Nuke it from orbit to be sure is the endgame for all IT projects, eventually.Report
And sometimes the end comes right away (yes, Superfish, I’m looking at you.)Report
On the bright side, mobile users ought now at least to find the site including comments readable on smartphones, and I’ve updated the twitter widget in kind of a beta mode – which also is unfortunately as glitchy on my computer, but not on my smartphone and on other people’s, as the old one was.Report
Hey, you’re not kidding, comments are actually readable on mobile! Though even if we were threading properly here it might be tough to follow conversation threading there. Still, I prefer the mobile comments now, to the old one-character-per-row system.Report
Oddly enough, I never had a problem reading on smart phones, OT was much better than most other sites.Report
OK we’re now in configuration sub-alternative 3b/f-2 – logged out user (me – currently)(but possibly counted “known”) not needing (apparently) to engage in extra refreshes to see/get to new comment via Gifts of Gab link.
Unfortunately, comment reply box always at bottom of thread, not where expected (expected functionality is “reply-in-place” more or less. Could be any of several explanations for it, first suspect the unusual @reply feature, but would put that at ca. 40% likelihood. Need to check for other unique aspects of set-up and could also be theme-related…
And I’m actually just killing time waiting for someone to call me back on something… and are other limitations on what I can do I won’t go into… expect to be off-line or off-this-line for a few hours beginning fifteen minutes ago.Report
OK – I think I have comments replying in place back again, along with Glyph’s admin bar, and may have the site’s re-caching/refreshing problem solved. Anyone care to verify?Report
Also had to edit that comment, and the changes seemed to appear immediately, so that seems to be taken care of, too.Report
Sorry, I missed this. Admin bar is back, not sure about whether the (original) caching issue is fixed but things seem pretty much back to normal for me.
I like the new “go to top of page” button, that’s hugely helpful on mobile (on my desktop I got a browser plugin a while back that does the same thing).
I miss the navigation buttons on GoG though, hopefully those are coming back?Report
@glyph The “original caching problem” was the not-logged-in user having to refresh the page to see new comments, which also resulted in having new comments listed in GoG that, when you clicked on them, would take you to the post’s page rather than the comment, requiring an additional refresh for you, if you were lucky, to find/see the comment.
I think the scroll-top is helpful on a desktop, too, especially after reading to the end of a long thread.
Reverted to a slightly modified version of the old GoG, at your request.
Still, futzing – or in a somewhat open-ended futzing process. I hope we’ll eventually have a dedicated space for people to make suggestions/complaints and for things to be tried out and feedbacked safely.Report
There was also a caching problem where you log in but when you go to a page that’s been cached it will act like you’re not logged in.Report
@will-truman Don’t think I’ve ever noticed that, but it’s been only a short time since I’ve had loginability. Let me know if the problem is still present or recurs.Report
Right now I’m dealing with a related-but-not-related issue on my Android browser where it’s not remembering logins anywhere. This is independent of the issue I describe, which would occur across the board. I’ll let you know if I see it independent of Angel Browser.Report
Why you may be experiencing either more bugs or less bugs today and tomorrow.
Fewer, not less.
#pedantReport
I thought “we have a ‘scroll to top’ button now? How dumb is that? How lazy do they think we are?”
Then I found myself reading a comment near the bottom and scrolling up and scrolling up and scrolling up and I looked at that button and… it was useful.
I hate that.Report
Isn’t it amazing what bad habits mice with scroll wheels teach our fingers?Report
you should see my index finger’s 100 years of mousing callusReport
One of my non-negotiable features on Android browsers is the easy ability to scroll to the bottom or top.Report
Wonder if we should add a scroll to bottom button, too. Don’t really want to spend time custom-coding it, but I think I may have run across a readymade version somewhere or other – points down when you’re high, up when you’re low.Report
Macs in particular do not accelerate scrolling sufficiently. Windows does. I guess Linux will if you hand-patch the code in the mouse driver.Report
I say this every time, but install Magic Prefs on your Mac.
http://magicprefs.comReport
It’s a work machine, and they dislike installing anything unapproved.Report
By the way, as someone who knows how frustrating this kind of thing is, (Ah, finally got issues 1-10 fixed, try it once more to be sure, and …. why are the comments in Lithuanian now?), I can’t thank CK enough for his hard work.Report
Was kinda hoping no one had noticed the Lithuanian delbySFR.Report
C.K., did you do something Saturday night? Because the scaling went to hell on my phone.It’s either way too small to read or I can pinch zoom in and enjoy scrolling horizontally to read. Maybe it’s not detecting my browser?Report
The main issue seems to be text wrapping.Report
I absolutely did something, or a few things, yesterday. Apparently, if I understand you correctly, your phone browser – can you specify which ones, and do you have different browsers to try? – is also scaling text – which it really shouldenoughta be doing, but some phones are more aggressive than others in these matters. I may be able to re-produced the problem on an emulator, and solve it more generally, or I may just have take away whichever particular glitchancement is making life difficult for you, pending set up in a less disruption-prone development mode.
I’ve also been informed this morning of a problem at the 1000-pixel width break point, though it doesn’t sound at first as bad as yours.Report
@road-scholar
Easiest thing for now is just to withdraw the glitchancements potentially affecting font-size and “legacy layout” – though I’ve left changes relating to margins/padding for smartphone reading unchanged. Those were done a couple of days ago, and on my Android phone make the difference between readable and ridiculous.
Let me know if you’re still having problems. Do I understand you correctly to be saying, maybe like aaron david above, that prior to yesterday/recently you were able to read the site just fine on your phone – I mean that columns weren’t absurdly narrow due to excess padding/margins?Report
First off, I’m using the Firefox browser on Android… whatever, 4.something. The issue seemed to be with the break points for word wrapping. Like the HTML or CSS was forcing the browser to display text using line lengths appropriate for a desktop display instead of allowing the browser to size the text and break the lines appropriate to the screen size. The result was either really itty bitty text or I could zoom in for decent font size but then I had to horizontally scroll because it wouldn’t re-wrap. I checked my browser settings but there wasn’t anything relevant there that I could find.
I know just enough about web design to have some theory about the problem but be wrong 😛 so I’ll just leave it at describing the symptoms. And whatever you un-did got rid of the problem. Thanks.
Btw, I really appreciate what you’re doing. The comments are a lot easier to read, among other improvements. Just giving you a friendly bug report.Report
Your friendly bug report was friendlily taken! I’m purty sure I know what I’d have to do to fix the problem, but I think I’m going to hold off on further catastrophic improvements until we have things set up better for containing them, as the last thing I want to do is create headaches either for users or for me.Report
@road-scholar Android 4.3, most likely, unless you’ve upgraded phones. Out of curiosity, have you tried any other browsers? I ask because I was really unimpressed with Firefox for Android. Chrome and Sleipnir are pretty good, and free (and nag/ad free).Report
I’d like to say I really appreciate seeing the number of comments and the author of the post.Report
RSS feeds going away?
Mine seem stuck from Will’s post on sliding down the drive.Report
Will requested we upped quantity to 200 – did it – maybe that had an effect? After you’re sure you’ve cleared cache, restarted, placed your phone in a paper bag and waved it around your head, etc., let me know and we can try a lower number or look at other possible adjustments. Will’s more an RSS-maven than I am, so might have other suggestions.Report