
The average age needed to style comments just went way down.
Photo by Jenn . (License: Creative Commons Attribution)
Beginning today, we are rolling out a completely rewritten comment system. Some users may notice the changes immediately, and others may notice the new stuff several days later. In other words, this is a rolling release, and since it may contain some bugs, we'd rather only a subsection of the Newsvine population be exposed to it at this time.
So, what's new??? A lot of stuff. Some visible and some under the covers:
At long last, you can now style your comments on Newsvine without typing out longhand XHTML tags. Using the new row of buttons on top of the comment box, you can do things like bold and italicize your text as well as adding links. If you aren't into clicking buttons, you can also use familiar shortcuts like Command-B (or Control-B on Windows) to accomplish the same. We give our thanks to the good folks developing the open-source TinyMCE editor for this bit of welcome awesomeness. Since WYSIWYG text editors on the web don't always produce perfect results, you can always switch to XHTML mode and enter tags in the old fashion way if you like. Swapping back and forth between modes is easy.
One of the nice things about the new comment editor is that you can stretch it to be as tall or short as you'd like and your preferred size will be remembered. So if you're a bit longwinded, you can have a big comment box on every page, and if you're more succinct, you can choose a smaller size. Sometimes, however, you're SO passionately engrossed in the penning of a genius comment that you really can't be bothered by any other text on the screen while you're spewing your wisdom. In cases like these, you can now hit the "Full Screen" button and your whole browser will become a canvas for your prose.
As the comment counts have grown at Newsvine, we have been working on a pagination solution which seeks to be an unobtrusive as possible while still allowing for reasonable page load times. We hate pagination over here and we hate sending people to different URLs to read an entire conversation. It's kind of like how you can't just watch an entire season of Dexter by picking up a DVD at your local video store. You have to go to the store multiple times, rent multiple discs, and watch the season piecemeal. It's good for the store and the movie studio as they make more money off of you, but it's bad for you. Pagination is no different, really. Sure we get a few more page views, but the tradeoff is that conversations can become fractured.
Paginating on Newsvine is particularly difficult because we have threaded comments, the super-useful "new" buttons, and the conversation tracker. While those elements make proper pagination extremely difficult, they are also what make Newsvine discussion threads -- from a technical standpoint -- more useful than most other sites' discussion threads.
With this release, we're rolling out "phase 2" of proper pagination on Newsvine (phase 1 was the temporary solution that's been in place for the last couple of months). There will be one more phase to the release, but this one fixes a lot of stuff and makes things generally much better.
Firstly, the conversation tracker now works across multiple pages. Secondly, the "new" buttons and stars now work properly across pages. In other words, if the next "new" comment on a thread happens to be on page 4 and you're on page 1, click on the "new" button will teleport you to page 4. Thirdly, we've turned the final "new" button red so you know you're at the last new comment. Click that final "new" button and you'll be taken to the top of the page. And finally, we now have numbered navigation at the bottoms of our comment threads so you can jump from page 1 to page 30 or directly to the last page with a single click. We're actually encouraged by the amount of bug reports we've gotten every single day for the last month or so about this. We love that people are interested in seeing not just the first comments but also the most recent ones (and theirs, of course).
Although our old spellchecker was apparently so good that OldFogey used it to spellcheck his Word documents, it was less than clean under the hood. Aside from using dated code, a new version of it had to be loaded for each domain. In other words, if you read articles from two Newsviners, you loaded the spellcheck twice. We've now switched to TinyMCE's built-in spellchecker so you only have to load the (much smaller) code once. The spellchecker's quite sharp looking as well. We like it even better than the last one.
The code which displays comments on Newsvine is fairly intricate and hasn't been rewritten in a long time. Over the last several months, there have been a lot of enhancements we've wanted to make to comment threads (such as the ones listed above) that we've held off on until the whole thing could be rewritten. It is now rewritten! With all of this heavy lifting out of the way, we look forward to adding things like avatars, country flags, and other elements to Newsvine comment threads that will further set them apart from the rest of the industry's. You may also find that story pages load a lot faster with the new comment service running.
Look for more improvements soon!
DANG.It's nice .My dream come true.Who do I thank?
Oh, I'd just suggest adding it for comment edits :-).
And sometimes the number of votes goes away on my comments.
Wooooooooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooooo! Online Apps, is that you? Old Fogey is gonna be delighted!
Uh oh! Aine just noticed that out CoH bookmarklets no longer work! Waaahhhh! Oh, the humanity! Oh, the spam!
Yep, it's broken our bookmarklets . Nothing gets posted to the comment box via bookmarklet now. Please help us figure out how to fix that. It doesn't work in Normal Mode OR in XHTML Mode.
Yeah, the bookmarklet code needs to be changed from document.getElementById('commentsText_') to document.getElementById('commentsText'). The difference is the lack of an underscore. You (by which I mean danls) could make it backwards compatible for the transition by checking the old one first and then 'if (!u) u = ' the new way, etc.
Sorry about that.
Wow, country flags and all that to be added!! Whey hey! My British flag will be swaying in the comment breeze while I pen my patriotic lines. There'll be no stopping me now....LOL :o)
Can't wait to see the new comment boxes. I'll need HUGE ones, of course!! :o)
It's fascinating watching the changes as they unfold. Great news.
I should have also mentioned, about time.I use a forum from the 80s. They've got frames, yellow and aqua-on-black text, and all the other things that your web design teacher tells you not to do. But this year, they added a WYSIWYG editor. I was like, "if THEY can add it, Newsvine CERTAINLY can".So thanks, Josh!
When can we see this for articles/seeds?
Damn, country flags. There goes my credibility in American Politics.
* starts up IP anonymizer *
* Starts to think about witty retorts on 'what do you know, ur not even American' *
1.4 Thank you, Josh! *me smiling-happy again*
hoorray but..
a confession:
I'm an idiot. I saw things were different so i figured I must have got some virus or something so I did a system restore and was going, "man, my computer's doing weird things NOW in the middle of attempting to live blog and moderate the debate?"
That's not to say tomorrow i won't be happy to play with the new toys but right now i'm feeling dense. And my computers wondering why i keep blaming it.
Okay, I may have missed it--in which case I will place the dunce cap soundly on my head--but where did the talks about country flags come from? I didn't see anything about that in the article, just from Ms Cyprah's comment.
So, yeah, I iz confused. :(
Jared: From the article (almost at the end of it):
With all of this heavy lifting out of the way, we look forward to adding things like avatars, country flags, and other elements to Newsvine comment threads that will further set them apart from the rest of the industry's.
So can we still do it the old way, <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2200921/'>i.e. link to say a brutal review </a>of a Spielberg movie. It looks different so i'm not sure if it still works.
Also I miss it showing me how something will look before I hit post.
Okay, I see it now.
*places dunce cap firmly on head*
*places dunce cap firmly on head*
You also need to stand in the corner, Jared! :o)
looks like the answer to my question is either no or yes but you have to switch modes.
scoop scoots silently southward to give jared more room to sit with him in the corner.
I have a request to add to this. Can we put the buttons for WYSIWYG on the "Write Article" page also? It's a royal pain in the a$$ to have to hand code your articles.
Can we put the buttons for WYSIWYG on the "Write Article" page also?
They are already working on that (or it's at least on the list of things to get working lol).
Great! I'd like to simplify spicing up my articles a bit without having to hand code it.
Sweetness abounds with this little update. Great stuff.
Does the move to the TinyMCE editor mean we might see more editing functions in the article editor in the (near?) future, by any chance? Because that would make me dance for joy (and I'm not one to dance...)
Indeed
I'll find my dancing shoes (by which I mean the only pair of shoes)
These open source editors are getting better and better.
It's TinyMCE? That's what I thought. Wasn't sure, though.
I want my new comment box...
engrossed in the penning of a genius comment
Hey! If you're going to talk about my comments you might want to ask me first! :-P
Sounds like good stuff. I've already noticed the "click for next" fix between pages. THANK YOU.
A new spellchecker
Spellchecker? Don't all the real browsers already have one of those already built in ;-)Also, full screen mode is weird.This is also a test to see if it remembers which mode I want.
So it wouldn't let me post the comment in XHTML mode, I had to switch back to Normal mode first. Also, when I come back to edit the comment, there is no option for the comment editor anymore. Oh yea, the test failed. It doesn't remember that I wanted the XHTML mode, not the normal mode, hint, hint ;-)
And also apparently editing a comment strips out much of the previous formatting, or rather just the line breaks.
Bah! I want to test it!
Good bugs. Posting from XHTML mode should now be fixed. Remembering your preferred mode is a version 2 feature. I'll look into editing and line breaks.
TestingOutLine breaks.
Still breaks it in comment edit mode.
Also, after submitting a comment, there's no number of votes for the submitted comment or any non-voted comments above (Mystic Chick's comment in my case).
We're not showing the 0 for unvoted comments. It's a feature!
It's a feature!
Who let the coders out to play? They're talking with the users again, this could be trouble! ;)
Wait... you guys use Apple ?
Shun!
We're not showing the 0 for unvoted comments
You guys should just go ahead and make it so everyone automatically votes for their own comments, and thus every comment starts with one vote.
Also, in XHTML mode, is there anyway to get back the old buttons? I can't stand the TinyMCE editor (personal preference), but I liked the quick blockquote button of before.
I'll look into editing and line breaks.
I think it's because when the XHTML editor is used, it doesn't add the paragraph tags, just line breaks. Those breaks are saved when the comment is save, I'm guessing using a preserve formatting, but when the comment is opened back up in the edit mode, the preserve formatting is no longer in use so the line breaks go away as they tend to do in standard white-space ignoring HTML.
Also, I can post now from the XHTML mode, so you either fixed that, or I was an idiot before. Both are possible.
Posting from xhtml mode was fixed...I don't know about that whole idiot thing.
Ok, I just realized the biggest problem, comment preview is gone. Between that and the lack of a blockquote button in non-TinyMCE mode I feel naked now when I write comments.
Frankly, I'm just hoping a lack of comment preview means Newsvine is useable on an iPhone, now.
I really strongly want comment preview back.
I'm not going to whine that I don't have it yet, I'm just going to say it sounds good. Now please please can I have it too????
I'm not going to whine that I don't have it yet, I'm just going to say it sounds good. Now please please can I have it too????
Second.
Third, pretty please!! :o) *jumps up and down in anticipation* I can't wait to see my teensy weensy flag!
It helped to say something, I've got it now. Woohoo!
Elizabeth, can we share? If I ask I'm afraid I'll be expecting double for the next 5 weeks, but secondly in the Newsvine way.
**afterthought**
If both happen at the same time I can say that NV gave me twins! Fraternal, of course... ;oD
It helped to say something, I've got it now. Woohoo!
Wow, and I've got it now too..not the love bug, just the new box! :o)
I have to say that it's pretty cool. I do like it. All we need are some colours and font sizes and, Voila!
(HELP! with another matter. Can all the tech boffins tell me how to link to something specific on a page? Thanks. :o)
Ms. - it depends. What are you trying to link to on what page? (a paragraph, an image, is it referenced with an anchor tag, ...?)
contact author me - lets not hijack this thread
Thanks, Eriq, I will. :o)
Waaahhhh....I don't have it yet! I want it!!
I thought everyone had it by now. Obviously not one of the favoured ones, QACoach! :o) (*she says with an imperious swish of her head*)
Weird. The comment just sent me back to the page I linked from, then when I clicked back, there was a bit of random text in the comment box, and then that text disappeared. Â I hadn't typed anything yet when I was sent back to the previous page, but had just clicked INTO the comment box.
At any rate, I suspect you're now going to see a lot of superfluous formatting.:)
(It's going to take me awhile to remember that hitting return once automatically does a paragraph break.)
All in all, very cool, and should mean I'll see fewer emails from people wanting to know how to "put stuff in quotes."
As Adam mentioned -- this completely breaks the edit feature..
My fear of
superfluous
edited (twice)
All in all, very cool, and should mean I'll see fewer emails from people wanting to know how to "put stuff in quotes."
But Brian, how do I put stuff in quotes?
test
Interesting, the TinyMCE strikethrough is a span with a text decoration rather than the <code>del</code> tag. I'm glad they didn't add an insert tag though, I cringe when people use the insert tag as a form of emphasis to get the green font color rather than for it's real purpose of indicating inserted text.
But the ins mode is so pretty!
How about a real ins (an underline in Firefox, I think) and a <green> tag?
Underlined text is hard to read. It should be done sparingly at best. Plus underlined text is often confused for a link.
A green tag won't work because browsers won't know what to do with it. Most will probably ignore it, but since the doctype for newsvine is xhtml, technically the browser should throw an error for improper xml, not that any browser actually does that, or half the web would be broken.
Underlined text is hard to read. It should be done sparingly at best. Plus underlined text is often confused for a link.
Yeah, I know. That's why I liked Newsvine's green.
A green tag won't work because browsers won't know what to do with it. Most will probably ignore it, but since the doctype for newsvine is xhtml, technically the browser should throw an error for improper xml, not that any browser actually does that, or half the web would be broken.
Wait, I thought you could declare a random XML tag as a valid HTML tag. No?OK, how about a class (like "leadin")?
Oh, and by the way, comment editing (with line breaks) is fixed. Yay!
One more question. Can we make it so that tab automatically goes to the Post Comment button? I dunno where it goes (it sure doesn't insert a tabulation), but it's not Post Comment :-(.
Minor bug, though.
I'd like to second that request. The tab order is messed up - hitting Tab from the comment box takes you to some arbitrary pixel in the bottom left corner of the comment box, then to the box's corner (if you wanted to scale the box up or down) and then to the name of the next commenter down.
First tab should take you to the "Post Comment" (and vote, if you haven't yet) button, as it has from the beginning.
Very nice! :)
Geez, I still don't have the WYSIWYG. And spell check hasn't caught up with good old Americanized English like Geez. And it still requires spellcheck to be two words. Huuummmmphhhh!
OFG: You should be good now...
Seriously Mike. of should have been like the first guy... he's been pushing for it long enough ;-D
I sure like seeing old fogey happy! :)
Me too...you can just see him jumping in the air all excited! :o)
test
test
test
test
Did we pass?
I kinda doubt it. oldcrankyman has some nasty things to say about Newsvine in his column.
He's been really frustrated he doesn't get responses back when he e-mails support because the help files aren't addressing the problems he is having - and he really is having a hell of a lot more problems with the upgrade than most are. I told him to try switching to firefox when he e-mailed me. That has only helped a little bit.
He's really been a sweety up until this upgrade - now he's just feeling at the end of his rope. I'm gonna really miss him a lot if he has to leave because these tech issues are pushing his B/P out the roof. I'm not techy enough to give him the help he is needing. Any kind soul with more technical knowlege than me willing to volunteer?
Yeah, he's really frustrated. I wonder if his e-mail feature is buggy, too and Newsvine isn't geting stuff from him. I filed a bug report on his behalf, just in case. We're all know how maddening it is when we can't get our Newsvine fix, don't we? How about a couple more people file bug reports for Cranky?
The donkey dick thing was over the top, but there have been times when I was tempted! LOLOL
The donkey dick thing was over the top, but there have been times when I was tempted!
That is exactly what she said!
Man, that's a *really* good that's what she said.
LOL! Awesome, D/0!
I <3 it. Thanks.
This is a test,
But wait how do I get green?
Really great! But it will take some time getting used to it. Thanks guys!
I can't see any green on mine! (*only green with envy*) :o(
Is it because I use Mac and Safari? :o(
I had to do the green using the XHTML mode
How can I join the party?
I'm ready, too! Pretty please, and all that. ; )
Got it! Looking good.
You mean, I don't get to play either? ::pout::
yippie
Ohhhh!!!
Now I do. This is nifty.
No fair! I'm still waiting!
You are not as posh, Brad. You have to wait until all the posh people have theirs..:o)
Guess the posh people have been taken care of now then, cause I got the new comment system :)
Posh-schmosh! What about some of us chronic beta testers who simply may not have been on Newsvine as long? **righteous indignation**
Thanks! (wow- that was fast)
Is there anything like a users and developers group here on NV? If not, what's staff's preference for discussion of bugs? Email tag gets tiresome. Plus, a publicly accessible group to this effect often helps in keeping everyone up to speed where glitches and their resolution are concerned. Thanks.
re pagination: I just left a comment on the first page of Killfile's 790+ debate thread and it dumped me on the very last page. Not good.
If you leave a comment as a reply to another comment (like this one), you should land inside that comment after posting. If you just leave one at the bottom of the page, it will take you to the last page, and show you your comment. Let us know if that is not the case.
It was this comment, which was a reply to another comment.
<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -->
I had the same problem – I’d respond to something in, say, comment 3 and it’d move me somewhere else. That was only in Killfile’s article so I wasn’t sure if it was related to this new stuff or was unrelated.
ok and what is the deal with the above? I think it's coming when I copy a comment from word (i read stuff offline last nite) and then cut and paste. And if i forget to check to make sure it adds all that language?
All I really wanted to say was the bottom two lines
Never copy and paste from Word. It's evil. It has a known habit of carrying its crap code across to web forms.
You can avoid this by copying into a basic text editor like Notepad first and then copying to the web form from there.
word = evil
got it
oh notepad works better? Sounds good. Thanks.
That's the same reason my punctuaction turns into squigglies I think.
You can get the same functionality as notepad by adding two extensions to Firefox:
That will give you 4 notepads that slide out of the way - right within the browser (so you don't have to open another application and it solves the issue of "window focus").
My complicating factor is I do most of my writing when I have no access to the Internet.
But if by "window focus" you mean it fits the lines on the screen then I'm definitely interested.
No, window focus is when you have two or more windows open and they don't all remain visible at the same time, and if you click in one window (giving it "focus"), the other window disappears behind it. This happens when you have, say, Notepad and Firefox open. Having the 4 notepads in the sidebar of Firefox eliminates the "disappearing" notepad application when you click anywhere in Firefox.You don't have to be online to use Firefox, there's an offline mode... although if offline, I'd be tempted to use one of the free word processors with a lighter footprint than Word for a laptop. There's a ton of them out there,... Q10 can be put on a thumbdrive and used anywhere, AbiWord is pretty good too, but one I used for years is called RoughDraft.
<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math";
Scott has Vista on his laptop. *snert*
Still testing, nothing to see here.
Perhaps it would be an idea to remove certain options from the formatting, as it is possible to comment in irritatingly big letters.
Aine said: No, window focus is when you have two or more windows open and they don't all remain visible at the same time, and if you click in one window (giving it "focus"), the other window disappears behind it. This happens when you have, say, Notepad and Firefox open. Having the 4 notepads in the sidebar of Firefox eliminates the "disappearing" notepad application when you click anywhere in Firefox.You don't have to be online to use Firefox, there's an offline mode... although if offline, I'd be tempted to use one of the free word processors with a lighter footprint than Word for a laptop.
See?
That will give you 4 notepads that slide out of the way - right within the browser
Great tip Aine! Now I don't have to go back and forth between notepad (where I have my first comment CoH warning) and Firefox. I have NewsVine to that for turning me on to Firefox. I love it.
I can't wait!
All this is nice, or at least I assume it is since I don't seem to have it yet, but I think I'd rather you fixed the comment tracker.
seems to have a few issues not wanting to take a comment on a rather busy thread, but for the most part it seams to be working pretty well
I've noticed that too, but it does seem to be working pretty well. I'll have to put on my tester hat tomorrow to see what I can break.
Oh, sure. Do this when I'm drunk. I thought someone was messing with me.
One of the icons looks like a Vicodin embedded in a whore's mattress. What does that do?
Walt D I'm not sure whether to tell you how much that whore charges or to ask how you know what a whore's mattress looks like?
or to ask how you know what a whore's mattress looks like?
Mmmmmmm...I've been wondering about that myself! :o(
Hmm...I switched from my desktop computer where I had the new comment features to my laptop where I still had the old comment box. I didn't get teh new comment box on my laptop until I revisited this thread. Curious timing or by design?
I also noticed that the new comment box kills the browser's built-in spell-check in normal mode but browser spell-check works in XHTML mode. Is there any way around that? I rather like being able to spell-check without having to click spell-check.
I'm having the same problem. I'm going to have a lot more mis-spellings if there isn't a way to fix that!
It would be nice to have a blockquote button available in XHTML mode. In normal mode it's too awkward to have to paste the text that I wish to quote, highlight it, then apply the tag or hit the blockquote button, paste the text, hit Enter to separate my comment from the quoted text, and then hit the blockquote button again to actually begin my commentary. As it stands it's quicker to flip over to XHTML mode, manually tag it, and go from there. Maybe XHTML mode could mirror the old comment box for those of us who just want some tagging shortcut buttons but not full WYSIWYG.
Maybe XHTML mode could mirror the old comment box for those of us who just want some tagging shortcut buttons but not full WYSIWYG.
Yea, I like that idea. Give us the old comment forms back for a "legacy mode"!
T.T When do I get my new box.... This all sounds very excellent, but I'm booing until I have it. (pouts)
I have it now!
Mine.
MINE.
Sweet Victory is mine.
Strike?
Ah, dude, Links give you the option to open in a new window now. I don't have to type in "target=_new" anymore. You guys win.
Yay, I just got the new comments! Pretty sweet guys....pretty damn sweet.
Keen! :D
Can't wait to try this sucker out.
Let me test this baby
<shout mode>
U R WRONG!!1!!
</shout mode>Can we limit some of the more elaborate tags?
edit: yes we can. I added big blinking text which could be seen in preview, but those tags got stripped when posting. Phew.
Thanks, works like a charm!
Very glad to see the evil of blink is stripped out. Lives would be lost if that horror made it through.
I still want to know how people with absolutely zero HTML knowledge manage to figure out how to use that bloody blink tag.
I'm with Palin on this one; you can't blink.
If you blink the stone angels will get you.
Red Wolf - that's it! The NV editor needs a Tardis interface!!!
Fugi, are you a Doctor Who fan? If so, I have a group invite for ya....
Please, Div? Thanks!
Invitation sent for The New Doctor Who group.
Wheeee! Thank you! ♥
You're in Easy Mode. If you prefer, you can use XHTML Mode instead. |