Webtwopointohifications

first comment

Awesome functionality - and much faster!

The first complaint would be that the comment database is out of whack; for example, the chromosome thread is now empty.

Um, I meant to say that it's the showing of the database that doesn't work - but you got that.

I don't spend much time here these days, but I still wish to thank Reed for his tireless and long devotion to PT as a project.

I know it eats up a lot of time, especially for a postdoc!

I don't spend much time here these days, but I still wish to thank Reed for his tireless and long devotion to PT as a project.

I know it eats up a lot of time, especially for a postdoc!

Comments are a bit off because there are still bugs in the update process from MTOS 4.1 to 4.15. The best thing to do is post a comment and they will appear.

I can 3^d and 4th that. ;-)

You know, at some time the evolution of a postdoc may undergo a specialization event and it becomes a "post doc". Which as the name implies these days may or may not be about retreating into the blog environment niche fully. Or maybe I'm thinking of a gene duplication event with more blog fitness - "post postdoc"?

Ehrm, anyway, am I the only one having trouble seeing threads in the new comment format? For example, I seem to see the Yoko Ono thread fully.

Hmm. Time to dump the old PT cookie again, perhaps.

Oops, and hence the "Update" button. Thanks Reed!

Reed A. Cartwright said: Comments are a bit off because there are still bugs in the update process from MTOS 4.1 to 4.15. The best thing to do is post a comment and they will appear.

I'll also point out that this has been a "weekend project", that I've worked on for the pass two months.

So far, so good.

Thanks, Reed!

Well, actually....!

I was unable to preview my last, although, it might be me.

However, since I *never* make mistakes on the interwebs...;) oh, wait! I found it. See, I told ya I never make mistakes!

Xomment, schmomment....whatever.

Where is a 14-year-old when I need one?

Luddites Unite....at http://www.ludditesunite.org

What happened to the crew login link?

The crew login is back. Thanks Wesley for pointing it out.

This looks weird.

I like it better though.

bump

Does the "update" button function rely solely on the number of replies having become larger? I ask this because the "Florida, Open letter..." thread didn't update when I clicked the Update button; apparently a number of offensive off-topic replies had been deleted, but in the mean time an identical number of new replies had been added. Doing a refresh made the changes manifest.

Yes, it is based on the number of comments.

Has the system lost the ability to determine what a user's highest viewed record number in a given thread was?

I gather from current behavior that one will need to scroll down and try to remember which replies were previously read.

It's still there; however, IE7 appears to be unable to retrieve the cookie and I'm not sure why. I'm fighting with it this evening.

I'll also add that if you want to jump to the last read comment, instead of just opening the panel, then you have to use a special url (as before); however, I haven't updated the links on the site to use it yet. To do it manually, try appending #comment-last to the entry url and refreshing.

Heh. IE7. Not going to be used here in any likely nearby geological era.

It's Opera and Firefox here, given that, mercifully, there is not an Internet Exploiter version available for OSX.

Glad to know you are fighting the good fight.

I'll be happy to test anything beta-ish (as long as I don't have to install Windows).

I changed the cookies up, hopefully they'll work better on IE7. I've also added a 'new' comments link to the entries on the main page.

*tap* *tap* ...is this thing on?

The one before this one (with the bigger print etc.) was good I thought. Not so sure about this one though. I can't seem to preview either. And where's the spellchecker gone to ?

I really like the new comments panel. And the same-page preview feature is very convenient. Thanks, Reed!

Peter:

I too had trouble using the preview. You may have to scroll down as it can appear off the bottom of the screen. I wondered about the spell-checker, a feature I often use when complaining about a troll's spelling :)

I also agree with the comment about the larger print. For me, the difficulty is not that the print is too small but that the lines are too long and I find it quite slow to track from the end of one line to the start of the next.

That said, I appreciate the other features like the update button.

I seem to be getting the preview now (the preview appears below the comments) so that's now working OK Still can't find the spell checker though (care to tell me where I'm going wrong Reed ?). My spelling is terrible so obviously I'm going to have to use microsoft word or an online dictionary if the spell checker's gone now (that's providing I realise the spelling is incorrect in the first place !) The block quote facility is very handy. I've just found out what the update button now does as well Richard.

I like the new format. It used to be that once a page reached 100+ comments it would load exceptionally slowly for me. Now I don't have to worry about that.

The one minor glitch I'm seeing now is that the page has been pushed a bit wider than before and there's now a short side-scrolling bar in my browser. Expanding the browser window has no effect; the columns also expand to keep the same proportions. Not a big problem, but it'd be nice if the page could fit the window again.

Altair IV said: The one minor glitch I'm seeing now is that the page has been pushed a bit wider than before and there's now a short side-scrolling bar in my browser. Expanding the browser window has no effect; the columns also expand to keep the same proportions. Not a big problem, but it'd be nice if the page could fit the window again.

I'm using Firefox (Iceweasel) on Debian Linux. It may have something to do with the fact that I use a large font size, but reducing it doesn't have any effect.

And actually, now that I notice, the main page is also showing the same thing. Something is pushing the columns just a bit too wide. Now I'm wondering just how long it's been this way.

As the page is loading everything seems fine, and it only pops wide at the very end. That could be a clue.

Ah, never mind. I've discovered what's causing it. It's the "Resizable Form Fields" extension I have installed. As soon as I disable that, the scrollbar goes away.

Peter Henderson said: obviously I'm going to have to use microsoft word or an online dictionary if the spell checker's gone now

Torbjörn Larsson, OM said:

Peter Henderson said: obviously I'm going to have to use microsoft word or an online dictionary if the spell checker's gone now

Your browser, or a plugin for it, should have that facility. Firefox do this for text boxes (user selectable).

I've changed the location of the preview box to make it more obvious.

bump, spell check enabled...

I've found a new problem with the way it remembers the last posts read. Everything seemed to be working fine at first, but then for some odd reason it started to seemingly randomly forget my position on some threads. Sometimes it even forgot every thread on the main page.

Since Firefox lets you see the contents of the cookie, I was able to follow the way it records your position, and it appears that it only records the last 25 threads accessed; when you open number 26, it will drop the oldest one from the list. Since the main page has more than 30 open threads, if you access them all in order and then jump back to the beginning again, you'll find it has already forgotten the first ones (and if you continue reading down the line again, you'll keep missing a moving target).

I think the number needs to be bumped up a bit so that it can handle all the threads on the main page, and maybe a few extra for people who like to browse the archives.

Peter Henderson said: Looks like Reed is going to re-activate the spell checker at some stage.

Peter Henderson said: I use firefox on my laptop but internet explorer on this one. I did get a message saying that a dictionary was being installed on one of the updates but I'm not quite sure how to use it.

Peter Henderson said: Some of the online dictionaries are very good so I can use those in the meantime although, as I have said, providing I can recognise the mistake in the first place !

Time for a busy cookie pun... or not.

Okay, that was interesting. Obviously my comment was on Altair, not another reply to Peter Henderson.

So I have to manually clear the "Replying to ..." box after delivering the first comment. Seems to me that is backwards. But OTOH I didn't read the comment header either...

PT spell check works great btw. The main difference is that FF's is more automatic (and thus more intrusive when active).

Reed A. Cartwright said: bump, spell check enabled...

Torbjörn Larsson, OM said: So I have to manually clear the "Replying to ..." box after delivering the first comment. Seems to me that is backwards. But OTOH I didn't read the comment header either...

"Florida: Open letter on learning from history"

Our feed locations have changed. I'll try to symlink to the old ones.

This is our new feed: http://pandasthumb.org/atom.xml.

This thread doesn't prove anything about your mythological darwinist religion, it proves you need an intelligent agent to add new information. You should start to research all the information that was frontloaded into your site before the fall.

This thread doesn’t prove anything about your mythological darwinist religion, it proves you need an intelligent agent to add new information. You should start to research all the information that was frontloaded into your site before the fall.

Creobot said: ... you need an intelligent agent to add new information...

Nitpick: Timothy Sandefur closed the Curriculum thread, the page now issues an error box on viewing.

Just a note: When I click on "reply", I'm taken to the comment text box, but no quotation of the post I'm replying to is in the text box. I am using Firefox, and it did work yesterday.

dpr

D P Robin said: Just a note: When I click on "reply", I'm taken to the comment text box, but no quotation of the post I'm replying to is in the text box. I am using Firefox, and it did work yesterday.

Torbjörn Larsson, OM said: Nitpick: Timothy Sandefur closed the Curriculum thread, the page now issues an error box on viewing.

Reed, thanks for your diligent work!

Reed, I just tried to reply to your reply, but no quote came up. The several random posts I tried to "reply" didn't work out either.

Version info:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14

dpr

Hmm. When you go to Tools::Error Console does anything show up after you try to reply? I'm running the same version, but on Vista.

Have you tried clearing your cache and cookies for the site?

What about running in safe mode, and quoting from there? I'm thinking that something you have installed is interfering with with the script.

Reed A. Cartwright said: I'm running the same version, but on Vista.

Reed A. Cartwright said: Hmm. When you go to Tools::Error Console does anything show up after you try to reply? I'm running the same version, but on Vista. Have you tried clearing your cache and cookies for the site? What about running in safe mode, and quoting from there? I'm thinking that something you have installed is interfering with with the script.

Testing email notification...

The splitting up into pages is good for online viewing, esp. on machines with limited capacity, but I like to download long threads to read off-line. With the new system, downloading gets the first and last page of replies.

The only way I've found to "download" pages between those two is copy/paste, and that loses any formatting that was present in the notes, making it hard to figure out what's a quote and what's an answer when a replying uses italics to distinguish quoted text from response to it.

Could we have a button to load or download the whole thread?

Henry

I'll consider it.

Note that you can already use a special link to download all comments, e.g.

http://pandasthumb.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-comments.fcgi?__mode=xomment&id=3799&a=param

You just have to make sure that the id parameter matches the entry that you want to download all the comments for. This can usually be found if you search the source of the entry page, e.g. 'entry-3799'.

However, I'll have to consider the best way for switching between a paneled layout and an archival one. Maybe I'll fashion a custom link for it, like I did for #comment-last.

Note that you can already use a special link to download all comments, e.g.