It deals with apostrophies in a retarded way. I had to run a big search/replace to get it to validate. Every apostrophy seems to become either "'" (an invalid sequence) or the hexidecimal code 0x92.
The hex code is bad, the ' is perfectly legal though. I would like to see it sent as ' but that is a regex for later
I also added "
"s to the beginning of every newspost after the <div>, since the software doesn't crate those. Instead, the first </p> in the newspost would cause an error. The software made up for this by appending
s to the newsposts, with no closer.
This isn't the software, it is the newsposts themselves.
Furthermore, it does not properly encode ampersands. It simply sends them through as "&", when it should change them to "&"
The "software" is simply a form. The more I think about it, the more I realize firu's idea of having a bunch of HTML guys iterate through the newsposts is a good idea.
I don't know what Tycho and Gabe use to make newsposts, but there's an editor for the web browser named FCKEditor (demo). FCKEditor outputs valid markup, so getting them to use that instead of whatever it is now will make keeping newsposts correct easier. Should also make them easy to write.
It will be, I just haven't enabled it yet. I actually need to thank you as I forgot the name of the package and so I was googling and coming up with HTML Area, which is nice, but no FCKEditor.
If you don't want to use FCKEditor, or they use something else to write their posts, run them through a validation perl script or something. Replace characters according to what I had above.
The eventual solution will be FCKEditor, it is best for all parties involved.
The newspost headers don't scale properly when I increase text size in Firefox. The fix for thijs would be to change the .fullpostheader class from "height: 60px;" to "min-height: 60px;". This should work properly in IE 6, Opera, and Firefox, but I'm not certain about anything else.
The effect of the change would mean that when I increase font size, the title bar will increase in height to hold the Title, Date, and Author of the post.
min-height isn't universally supported was the last thing I heard... I am willing to try it if it is though
I can't search for text used in a comic. Only the name of the comic. I think.
That would be a lot of hand entering of text. We are going to use a list of keywords to populate the searches. We will be importing these keywords over the weekend.
I'm actually getting a different problem when posting. I keep getting a "connection closed" error message at the entered successfully screen. Gimme a sec and I'll see what it says when I post this and then edit.
Why is the date being sent twice? More relevently, why is Connection set to both keep-alive and close?
Ah. There is your refresh problem. Something is broken with lighttpd's proxying and that is why the forums are all goofed up. When Jan @ lighttpd fixes the fastcgi bug this won't become an issue anymore.
A List Apart was one of the first places I went to when I ran into road blocks. Bar none they are one of my favorite sites out there, unfortunatly, the code they have in that article is ten kinds of ugly.
if it had picked either the low or high res version, we'd be fine.
Yeah, I think we really do need a big list of broken things that I can just iterate through over the weekend. Do you have time \ want to spearhead this Ramius?
The site was loading random images the first time I opened it today. Funny parts included Gabe's Av on Tycho's newspost and on Gabe's post? A giant <- Back button. Also happened on the forums when I opened Games and Technology, and every topic had a lock on it. Oh I wish I had hit print screen on that one.
Heh. Sounds like you hit the site at the exact time I was bouncing the server and it just flushed its buffers to you.
I see you fixed the reload bug for most of the forums too. I am still getting it when I go to post a reply to something though.
I know you're loaded down with a lot of work right now though, and I appreciate everything you do for this forum Alpha.
Thanks guys. That means a lot to me. With the rough launch I've been a little sad because, regardless of the design gripes you have with the site, the code behind it is fairly solid and very fast but I hadn't heard anyone mention the speed increase. It doesn't bother me that much, but it makes your compliments even more appreciated.
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RamiusJoined: July 19, 2000Administrator, ClubPAadmin
One thing I'm noticing is that while the page-text is loading super duper fast, the entire page (graphics and everything) is feeling like it loads slower than before.
For some reason I notice it more in IE than in Firefox. I don't know if that has to do with the way it handles caching, or if it is just more noticiable because the png's take a moment to snap into transparent mode, or what.
When doing a shift-reload, so as to force it to reload all the graphics, I'm counting slowly to about 5 or 8 before everything loads.
The ads might be a bit slow (3rd party servers for the lose), but the rest should all be very snappy. We just changed the kernel buffer size for the OS from 64Mb to 512Mb (and we will move it to 1Gb tommorow) the results should be noticible immediately (the server load has dropped in half) we are running at 78% CPU free right now with a load average of 0.31.
I'm definitely still seeing the slowness, and I'm concerned that the PNG hack has something to do with it (although I haven't actually looked at the code behind the PNG hack yet.) This is my old crappy P3-450 so I don't know if that has anything to do with it. But the first time I hit the page in IE every day, it takes literally 8 seconds for the images to pop in. While they are loading, my window is unresponsive. It has a similar feeling to when you hit a site using java and the virtual machine has to load up for the first time.
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RamiusJoined: July 19, 2000Administrator, ClubPAadmin
I've been thinking about the [*] problem, and something you might do as a pretty straightforward interim fix is this:
div.postbody > li { margin-left:14px;}
I only tested it in Firefox and IE, though. I couldn't tell you if it will work for Safari and Opera.
EDIT:
while you're in the css file. You should sneak this into the .newspost .postbody:
line-height: 1.3em;
It should be a subtle difference, nobody needs to know except you and me.
The li css hack breaks for semantically correct html, I am trying to not introduce fixes like that right now.
That there CSS hack should NOT break semantically correct html. ">" is a CHILD selector. It should only match when div.postbody is the immediate parent of the li. Which should not be the case in sematically correct html, in that case the li's parent will be an ol or ul.
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I see you fixed the reload bug for most of the forums too. I am still getting it when I go to post a reply to something though.
I know you're loaded down with a lot of work right now though, and I appreciate everything you do for this forum Alpha.
Thanks guys. That means a lot to me. With the rough launch I've been a little sad because, regardless of the design gripes you have with the site, the code behind it is fairly solid and very fast but I hadn't heard anyone mention the speed increase. It doesn't bother me that much, but it makes your compliments even more appreciated.
With all the bug reports I've been filing, you probably feel I'm your biggest critic. Not so. I'm a huge fan of what you've done, and more than anybody I think I have a sense of what was involved in pulling it off. If anything I'd say I'm a bit jealous that you got to follow through on so many plans that I never got around to. Kudos to you, Alpha. You deserve it.
Ah. There is your refresh problem. Something is broken with lighttpd's proxying and that is why the forums are all goofed up. When Jan @ lighttpd fixes the fastcgi bug this won't become an issue anymore.
Any idea when this will be? I really appreciate your hard work for the site, but I also really hate having to use firefox :P
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RamiusJoined: July 19, 2000Administrator, ClubPAadmin
I'm sure that put to the task, the forumers could find all of them within a day, but I don't know if that is pointless, if you have some better way of identifying them.
Actually, if I could have a list of comics that are broken by the weekend, I could probably manually fix the database entries by Thanksgiving.
OK. I will spearhead getting this list together. Just for the comics. I'm not going to look at the newsposts unless I have time. They will probably get looked at under firu's idea, anyways.
p.s. Alpha - look for my email regarding the old newsposts.
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RamiusJoined: July 19, 2000Administrator, ClubPAadmin
edited November 2005
Here's a new bug that I noticed for the first time today.
In IE, there is a bit of blank space at the top of the page, between the swoosh image and the top of the document body.
I think the first one is more elegant, and less prone to being accidently reintroduced later. But you might NEED to do the second one. I'm not certain if you will get the preload of the image or not if you place it inside a block that is display:none.
There's a new comic in the RSS feed but it's just sending me to a redirect (in the folder you'd expect given the date). Is this intended functionality.
I'm an RSS whore
Also, people never bother to express thanks on the internet, because they're all assholes who believe that any free consistent service should be taken for granted.
Thanks alpha
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RamiusJoined: July 19, 2000Administrator, ClubPAadmin
edited November 2005
yeah, new content seems to be buggy at the moment. I'm assuming you are aware of it, Alpha, but just to be safe, here is the description of the bug:
/comic works while /comic/2005/11/16 does not. Also, if you click the news button from /comic it points you at /2005/11/16 which says: "You are being redirected" But it doesn't actually bounce/redirect. And that link is wrong. It is pointing to Friday, 11/18. When you click it you get ANOTHER "you are being redirected" which points to the root page, which of course works.
yeah, new content seems to be buggy at the moment. I'm assuming you are aware of it, Alpha, but just to be safe, here is the description of the bug:
/comic works while /comic/2005/11/16 does not. Also, if you click the news button from /comic it points you at /2005/11/16 which says: "You are being redirected" But it doesn't actually bounce/redirect. And that link is wrong. It is pointing to Friday, 11/18. When you click it you get ANOTHER "you are being redirected" which points to the root page, which of course works.
In addition to the above, if you click on the link in the newspost for todays comic it takes you to yesterdays one, and to the image itself rather than the page it is on.
And if you click on "comic", and then use previous to get back to yesterdays comic, next doesn't work but takes you to the redirected screen instead.
As far as searching the webcomics goes... what about something like Oh No Robot? You probably wouldn't be able to use Oh No Robot itself because PA would kill it, but something similar might work.
It deals with apostrophies in a retarded way. I had to run a big search/replace to get it to validate. Every apostrophy seems to become either "'" (an invalid sequence) or the hexidecimal code 0x92.
The hex code is bad, the ' is perfectly legal though. I would like to see it sent as ' but that is a regex for later
The "software" is simply a form. The more I think about it, the more I realize firu's idea of having a bunch of HTML guys iterate through the newsposts is a good idea.
Oh, I thought the newspost thing was some sort of external program, or in-page one like FCK.
It deals with apostrophies in a retarded way. I had to run a big search/replace to get it to validate. Every apostrophy seems to become either "'" (an invalid sequence) or the hexidecimal code 0x92.
The hex code is bad, the ' is perfectly legal though. I would like to see it sent as ' but that is a regex for later
The "software" is simply a form. The more I think about it, the more I realize firu's idea of having a bunch of HTML guys iterate through the newsposts is a good idea.
Oh, I thought the newspost thing was some sort of external program, or in-page one like FCK.
It deals with apostrophies in a retarded way. I had to run a big search/replace to get it to validate. Every apostrophy seems to become either "'" (an invalid sequence) or the hexidecimal code 0x92.
The hex code is bad, the ' is perfectly legal though. I would like to see it sent as ' but that is a regex for later
The "software" is simply a form. The more I think about it, the more I realize firu's idea of having a bunch of HTML guys iterate through the newsposts is a good idea.
Oh, I thought the newspost thing was some sort of external program, or in-page one like FCK.
I've been thinking about the [*] problem, and something you might do as a pretty straightforward interim fix is this:
div.postbody > li { margin-left:14px;}
I only tested it in Firefox and IE, though. I couldn't tell you if it will work for Safari and Opera.
EDIT:
while you're in the css file. You should sneak this into the .newspost .postbody:
line-height: 1.3em;
It should be a subtle difference, nobody needs to know except you and me.
The li css hack breaks for semantically correct html, I am trying to not introduce fixes like that right now.
That there CSS hack should NOT break semantically correct html. ">" is a CHILD selector. It should only match when div.postbody is the immediate parent of the li. Which should not be the case in sematically correct html, in that case the li's parent will be an ol or ul.
There's a problem with using the Child Selector Hack, because IE7 will support child selectors, thus breaking the page again. the IEBlog has an article on this subject that may prove useful.
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RamiusJoined: July 19, 2000Administrator, ClubPAadmin
edited November 2005
If IE7 is going to start supporting the child selector, they shouldn't continue to display LI elements without a containing UL element as indented. But maybe they will. In that case, the bulletpoints would be indented FURTHER in IE7 than any other browser. But at least they wouldn't be hanging off the side of their block container. And besides this is only meant to be a temporary fix until the old newsposts get cleaned up.
Any chance of making bigger comic/newspost navigation buttons? They're way too small for me, especially since they only take up a third of the width that the comics themselves do.
Also, any comics that are wider than normal don't display properly; they overlap the edges of the table to the right. It's only a couple of old comics thoguh, so it isn't that serious, but it's definitely something Gabe should keep in mind for future comics.
I am seeing all the coding for today's newspost. Every
, , and <a> is visible to me (and of course they are not doing their jobs). I am looking at this on a slightly old version of Mozilla on a slightly old Linux box, so it may not be universal...
Just saw it on a Win XP system using IE 6.0, so maybe it is...
I am seeing all the coding for today's newspost. Every
, , and <a> is visible to me (and of course they are not doing their jobs). I am looking at this on a slightly old version of Mozilla on a slightly old Linux box, so it may not be universal...
Just saw it on a Win XP system using IE 6.0, so maybe it is...
Posts
I know you're loaded down with a lot of work right now though, and I appreciate everything you do for this forum Alpha.
The "software" is simply a form. The more I think about it, the more I realize firu's idea of having a bunch of HTML guys iterate through the newsposts is a good idea.
It will be, I just haven't enabled it yet. I actually need to thank you as I forgot the name of the package and so I was googling and coming up with HTML Area, which is nice, but no FCKEditor.
The eventual solution will be FCKEditor, it is best for all parties involved.
With all the bug reports I've been filing, you probably feel I'm your biggest critic. Not so. I'm a huge fan of what you've done, and more than anybody I think I have a sense of what was involved in pulling it off. If anything I'd say I'm a bit jealous that you got to follow through on so many plans that I never got around to. Kudos to you, Alpha. You deserve it.
Any idea when this will be? I really appreciate your hard work for the site, but I also really hate having to use firefox :P
OK. I will spearhead getting this list together. Just for the comics. I'm not going to look at the newsposts unless I have time. They will probably get looked at under firu's idea, anyways.
p.s. Alpha - look for my email regarding the old newsposts.
In IE, there is a bit of blank space at the top of the page, between the swoosh image and the top of the document body.
It appears to be due to this code here:
IE is seing the carriage returns as whitespace and so the div is getting layout even though it has no visible content.
There are two ways you could fix this.
1) add div.preload {display:none} to the CSS file
or
2) take the whitespace out of that line, so it is:
I think the first one is more elegant, and less prone to being accidently reintroduced later. But you might NEED to do the second one. I'm not certain if you will get the preload of the image or not if you place it inside a block that is display:none.
Also, the topic review pane isn't always loading when making a reply.
I'm an RSS whore
Also, people never bother to express thanks on the internet, because they're all assholes who believe that any free consistent service should be taken for granted.
Thanks alpha
/comic works while /comic/2005/11/16 does not. Also, if you click the news button from /comic it points you at /2005/11/16 which says: "You are being redirected" But it doesn't actually bounce/redirect. And that link is wrong. It is pointing to Friday, 11/18. When you click it you get ANOTHER "you are being redirected" which points to the root page, which of course works.
And if you click on "comic", and then use previous to get back to yesterdays comic, next doesn't work but takes you to the redirected screen instead.
Sorry, I thought the validator had not liked '
Oh, I thought the newspost thing was some sort of external program, or in-page one like FCK.
Brilliant!
There's a problem with using the Child Selector Hack, because IE7 will support child selectors, thus breaking the page again. the IEBlog has an article on this subject that may prove useful.
Also, any comics that are wider than normal don't display properly; they overlap the edges of the table to the right. It's only a couple of old comics thoguh, so it isn't that serious, but it's definitely something Gabe should keep in mind for future comics.
I am seeing all the coding for today's newspost. Every
, , and <a> is visible to me (and of course they are not doing their jobs). I am looking at this on a slightly old version of Mozilla on a slightly old Linux box, so it may not be universal...
Just saw it on a Win XP system using IE 6.0, so maybe it is...
Also, the comics don't show up in my in-box from the RSS feed.
Instead I get "You are being redirected"
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