Friday, December 16, 2005

For the new guys: Not Quite A Quest

I’m only going to do Quests for in-character-type stuff, and this is a technical request.  Hopefully (if a veteran can’t) our new CS geeks folks majors might be able to help.

What I’d like is to find or create a Javascripty something that meets the following specs:

  • Its main function is to collapse posts on the front page down to just their title lines, along with the edit links, permalinks, and comment counts.
  • It should at least have controls for Collapse/Expand all Proposals; Collapse/Expand all non-Proposals; Collapse/Expand everything.
  • It’d be very nifty if it used cookies somehow to remember settings.
  • It should require an absolute minimum of script elements and event attributes.  I know that external JS files can parse the DOM for classes/IDs/stuff to inject event handlers without changing the markup.  However, I’m not intimately familiar with the implementation, so I don’t know if we still need an onload=”” attribute in the <body> tag or not.
  • If there are any sort of standards-geek sort of practices that apply to Javascript that I’m unaware of, it should follow them.  But not to the point of zealotry that causes people to try to make calendars without using <table>s, because that’s just silly.  ;)

Anyone up to it, or a reasonable likeness thereof?

Comments

Saurik:

16-12-2005 09:26:06 UTC

I’m unfortunatelly much stronger at server-side activities than dealing with client-side Javascript (_especially_ due to cross-browser compatibility). Although, I might as well mention that this website doesn’t work in IE anyway, so I guess the cross-browser part is easier ;P. I do, however, have a friend whom I consider a God of Javascript whom I can ask questions of ;P. I’ll possibly look into it tomorrow, but I’m not sure as the project doesn’t interest me much :(. Maybe AgentHH would be interested?

Personally, I don’t have any problem with the “clutter” on the right hand side of the screen, so I don’t really have any reason to work on it. I don’t even understand why others are against it ;P.

I _am_ strongly motivated to work on the better comment listing interface. Right now I have a copy of notepad (SciTE when I’m on my Linux box) open constantly with the names of all the open proposals and the number of comments they had when I last viewed them, as well as a flag for whether I’ve voted on it yet or not. I then reload the website and look at the “clutter” on the right to see if the number of comments on any of the entries has changed. But that doesn’t even work for non-Proposal posts, which I’m currently viewing much less often for that very reason. It’s seriously seriously irritating to try to keep up with comments. I wonder if other players are even bothering, and that makes me feel less sure that things I’m writing are even being noticed by people (even if they are too long to bother to read, hehe).

(I should note to people that are used to this that it’s especially bothersome to me as I hosted a nomic a while back (although there was at least one player that didn’t have time and we ended up stopping after a few days) that used a newsgroup/mailing list (running off a news server I coded), and it had the nice property that you could either view it as a set of threads, or you could view it as a sequence of posts. I miss that.)

So, regardless, I _do_ intend to spend some time with EE very soon to try to build a sequential comment view.

AgentHH:

16-12-2005 10:23:27 UTC

Saurik: I’m already all over it. JavaScript is an interesting language along with DOM…

Keeping up with comments is insane. I just reload the page and watch the proposals on the right to see if any change.

Seventy-Fifth Trombone:

16-12-2005 11:28:34 UTC

Define “doesn’t work in IE.”  (Other than the relatively new JS error it throws.)

danopato:

16-12-2005 12:41:37 UTC

‘Fraid I have no time to contribute to getting things done, but I have a two more things I’d like to put on the table:

- Instead of just the number of comments, it’d be nice to have a tally of for/against/imp votes on each proposal in the sidebar.
- Might be nice to indicate which proposals you have voted on (either in the sidebar on in the main section, or both).

Elias IX:

16-12-2005 12:44:59 UTC

I have the programming skills of an instant cup of ramen noodles.

ChronosPhaenon:

16-12-2005 13:30:37 UTC

And a feature showing which posts have had new comments since your last visit would be good also.

Excalabur:

16-12-2005 20:16:45 UTC

Well, my programming skills are better than Elias’.  However, if it ain’t C or FORTRAN for scientific purposes, I’m utterly useless.  Want me to write you a Finite Element Model?

So yes, there are lots of features that would be ‘really nice’.  Unfortunately, _somebody_ has to write ‘em. 

So, come one, come all, contribute as you can. 

And it works in IE so long as your window isn’t less than 640px wide At least, it does here.  If you have more specific bug-reports, that’s cool, I’ll see what i can do.

It’s astonishing that noone here has complained before.

Saurik:

16-12-2005 20:27:33 UTC

When I open the page in IE I get a Javascript error “Object expected” on line 153. When I ignore this error, all the icons for Proposals on the page get set to a blue exclamation point.

Excalabur:

16-12-2005 22:52:46 UTC

Which IE are you using?

Saurik:

17-12-2005 00:29:05 UTC

Excalibur: 6.0.2800.1106.xpsp2.030422-1633

AgentHH:

17-12-2005 05:32:38 UTC

Hmm. JavaScript + DOM is insane. I don’t think I’ll have the skill to pull it off the way the blog generates code for quite a while. If anyone else can do it, go for it.

Excalabur:

18-12-2005 01:17:52 UTC

hm.  i’m on 6.0.2900.etc and don’t get anything.  *shrug*