DT Update Log and TODO

[andrewjoy]

Yeah I mentioned that earlier in this thread. Fortunately, the title does not propagate to subsequent posts. But it does dirty the Spy, and the repetitive titles in each thread are entirely unnecessary anyway. I look forward to their murder!

Edit: ooh! Looks like they’re already ignored for the Spy now. Good work Matteo!

I think honestly the whole post title thing needs to go! Its just more wasted space and pointless info.

We also need to make the buttons on the post ( quote , edit delete etc) much smaller and put them back at the bottom like on the old layout.

User info is better now but still needs to take up less horizontal space, and it needs to move to the left, just looks wrong over there, whoever made that the default over at phpbb needs to be shot , out of a cannon , into the sun.

Oh and the section colours need to return , that was one of my favourite features !

If you need any help give me a shout.

[matt3o]

And we have emoji support!

Uh-oh . I knew that would happen - emoji support and bam, people start to post purple penises.

I want to disable them already...

[Muirium]

Yeah, I know the feeling. But they’re a hell of a lot better than those hideously ugly animated smileys some people (who should know better, Choc!) like to use. Besides, the novelty will wear off for me soon.

[Scarpia]

Great work matt3o!! Having done quite a few web launches in my time I know how much effort goes into merely ensuring that the new system will even work, that login still works, that mobile and desktop styling and everything-in-between doesn’t break spectacularly on half the devices, etc. Matt3o did this single-handedly on a codebase he only took over recently, with reasonable downtime and minimal, if any, disruptive issues. That is no small feat and deserves a lot of respect.

As for possible tweaks and improvements, I agree with many of the repeated suggestions here:

• the post (reply) titles don’t really add anything so I’d happily drop them entirely
• the serif font used for thread/post titles feels out of place (serifs are for long form text) and I’d prefer a sans serif font there
• on desktop, the vertical space could be tightened up a bit by eliminating some of the user info in the right hand column
• some topic lists, like My Posts, on mobile use a lot of vertical space - on an iPhone 6S I can only see five at a time without scrolling, which is not much of a ‘list’ view
• the quick links to Spy and My Posts are sorely missed on mobile
• and a pet peeve: the UI icons and buttons on mobile are too small for my ISO standard European thumbs to consistently hit. For infrequently used buttons like ‘go to page number x’ it doesn’t matter, but the buttons we use all the time - quick links, ‘Next Page’, etc. - those should be easy to hit, like a Big-Ass Enter key on a vintage Alps board.

[andrewjoy]

I want to disable them already...

It was an option to , i had them disabled on the old site.

Can we also have the quote post option strip nested quotes ?

Further to that , i think some of the issues i have with the new layout are shading and wasted white space ( modern websites love to waste space and not have proper shading )


If we look at the old site , each vertical and horizontal section of text has alternate shading , this separates the text and makes it easy to read , i also like the last post time and name are separate , it fills in the wasted horizontal space. There is also less white space between the text and the text is larger in comparison to the rest of the site ( and also much nicer font)


In comparison the new site wastes loads of screen space , just look at all that empty space

[*]the serif font used for thread/post titles feels out of place (serifs are for long form text) and I’d prefer a sans serif font there

Serifs have no place on ANY screen. They are for old fashioned paper , the only exception is your e-readers.

[matt3o]

it won't be empty for long, I'll add a sidebar that will shrink the home a little

[kbdfr]

Yeah, I know the feeling. But they’re a hell of a lot better than those hideously ugly animated smileys some people (who should know better, Choc!) like to use. Besides, the novelty will wear off for me soon.

No idea what you’re talking about

I don’t even know where those emojis are supposed to be found when writing a post, they seem to be invisible to me.

[Muirium]

Wish they were invisible for me too.



A great feature would be animated gif blocking, as a user preference. Maybe emoji too, for you…

[TheInverseKey]

Wish they were invisible for me too.

Spoiler:

A great feature would be animated gif blocking, as a user preference. Maybe emoji too, for you…

Yeah this is going to get very annoying.....

[Muirium]

Quick question (with maybe a long answer): why is gzip off?

[Myoth]

also for some reason, you can post in a thread, without using the same title as the thread, I'm not sure what's the point of this

[Muirium]

Just because.

[samuelcable]

I'm reading this on the telegram post bot and it's tripping me up hard core

[andrewjoy]

Quick question (with maybe a long answer): why is gzip off?

gzip is slow compression, should be using LZ4

[matt3o]

Quick question (with maybe a long answer): why is gzip off?

nonsense! check your browser headers.

that silly text on the bottom just means that phpbb is not taking care of gzipping the content, that's because the webserver is already taking care of that.

also for some reason, you can post in a thread, without using the same title as the thread, I'm not sure what's the point of this

Don't ask... I didn't pick the forum software

[adhoc]

I’m not completely sold on the aesthetics, but damn the forum is nice on mobile. This is the nicest working forum for mobile I have seen to date.

[elecplus]

I really like the mobile, but messages are rather confusing. To send a message, you have to click on a tiny icon, and it presents you with the user control panel. After you scroll down quite a ways, you get to compose message. More scrolling will take you to the message area. The boxes are teeny tiny. Can this be improved any?

[kekstee]

Thanks for the change hiding user information with each post. Little things like this add so much usability.

After looking at it for a while my brain still can't handle the alternating shading every other post by the way. the thin line and gap from icons/title might be enough emphasis? The example above is true as well though, in the narrower thread overviews alternating colours help to separate things.

Also, again vertical space, I hope the thread overview can be adjusted to use the same height for every thread and not add page number lists in another line.

[ramnes]

DID SOMEONE SAY EMOJIS?!

Edit: On a more serious note, huge thanks matt3o for the hard work and for considering all the remarks that everyone is doing. That's awesome.

Edit 2: I also miss the right side bar with all the pictures threads.

[Muirium]

Indeed. He’ll blow a servo if he keeps this up much longer! All praise the roboverlord!

Can we also have the quote post option strip nested quotes ?

Sterling idea. Block quote abuse is one of my prickliest peeves. I’d consider auto shrinking lengthy quotes, too. Whenever someone quotes a whole OP the strangest sensation of HULK SMASH comes over me.

This stuff is context dependent, though. (I.e. a hard fix.) I seldom quote a post above me when I’m answering it, but I always go back and have to when I discover mine is on a new page. And then there’s the good old fashioned desire to answer every point in someone’s train of thought, for which nothing less than a full body quote to work with will suffice.

[Muirium]

Visiting New DT for the first time on my Mac, and I can see why people have been a bit… agitated. The new look is definitely more complete on mobile! Which is quite something. DT's always been a bit of a second class citizen there, until now.

On desktop, sure, the information density drop is profound. Here's my trusty Safari DT window before:

Screenshot 2019-01-08 at 7.01.35 pm.png (540.77 KiB) Viewed 6415 times

And after the move:

Screenshot 2019-01-08 at 7.02.09 pm.png (336.38 KiB) Viewed 6415 times

Same dimensions, but about half as much content. The text size is also appreciably smaller. Most everywhere you look, you're left staring into the infinite void of whitespace's cosmic maw!

That said, I do quite like a lot about it. I finally get to write in Helvetica! The image uploader is greatly improved. And I never was much of a fan of the forum section icons in any case. Some of what I'm feeling is surely a resistance to change, but the deeper I look the more I see the scale of the work Matteo put into it. It's a great place to find ourselves for our new start.

As for the post editor:

Screenshot 2019-01-08 at 7.17.27 pm.png (153.24 KiB) Viewed 6415 times

Those icons will take a while to grow on me. I must have tried every one of them before I finally found which one does [ code ] tags! But seeing them side by side with text buttons, I must admit they look better. The spoiler wiki youtube labels could better match the font size menu, or maybe those too should go iconic? I suggest something like this for the first!

Spoiler:

You know me: Helvetica über alles. I'd love more font consistency across the interface, from topic titles to control buttons. DT's typefaces were never my favourite part of the look, but they could become so now! Especially if a little larger where required.

[Muirium]

A conveniently timed spammer also led me to this part of the site's interface:

Screenshot 2019-01-08 at 7.34.16 pm.png (89.7 KiB) Viewed 6406 times

We could use some better options there. Every single time I ever report a post, it's for spam. Let's make that an option! In fact, I'd just make the list:

• Spam: the message is irrelevant advertising.
• Flamebait: the message is intended to provoke a pointless argument.
• Other: please use the further information field.

And I'm not even sure about the middle one. It's obviously for Mr. Anonymoushead, but so long as he keeps it to Off Topic, what's the bother? Note I didn't include Off Topic—being a major cause of OffTopicThority myself! And linking to pirated software isn't something I've ever seen here. (2002 wants its problems back.) I suppose someone might want to tag something as offensive to them, but that's what the description box is for. Let them spell it out.

Anyway, I'd simply like a quicker route to punching in the same coordinates I'm always after: It's spam, Jim.

[kokokoy]

The redirect from google searches fails. Not all though; there were a few working.

Tried this search "pro micro convert deskthority" and among the result only the "Teensy 2.0 alternatives, ATmega32U4" subject managed to redirect correctly.

[Muirium]

DuckDuckGo has the same problem. For instance, the top hit for "soarer site:deskthority.net" hits this dead end:

workshop-f7/soarer-s-keyboard-controlle ... t6767.html

Also: clicking entry bodies in the Spy no longer takes you to the thread. You've now got to hit the much smaller target of the thread title text.

[Khers]

Coming back to the spy after a while of inactivity is a rather interesting experience where the threads that have been updated in the meantime roll by, one by one, replacing each other at the top of the spy. In the old spy they just appeared simultaneously, which I think is a neater implementation.

[matt3o]

Same dimensions, but about half as much content.

just a small correction. We are about 300 pixels wider.

[micrex22]

That said, I do quite like a lot about it. I finally get to write in Helvetica!

It's actually possible to enforce a font override (out of the box) in Firefox if you don't want to use other websites fonts for writing and viewing. I use this because I disable font smoothing, and doing means you need a font with glyph data like Arial that isn't exclusively vector information as it doesn't scale down properly.

deskthority_new.PNG (536.42 KiB) Viewed 6294 times

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The new website looks okay, of course the icons won't display with any smoothing for me since they're text-based. I was always a fan of the simple easy-to-read colour breakdown of the old deskthority forum; the new design edges away from that and makes it slightly less digestible with less contrasts in a lot of areas. Still entirely usable though.

[matt3o]

today's updates

- mobile optimizations (the header navigation, spy and search results)
- optimized the spy when there are a lot of updates coming at the same time

edit:

- fixed youtube embed

[thorough]

I find the amount of different fonts a bit weird. The slab font for headlines in the forum stands out too much. (But that's entirely my taste.)

[adhoc]

How is the DT monetary fund? Donation page is down.