Shiny new blogs?

[Albert]

I'll also see if I can make the "List View' the default, instead of the much less useful "just throw a bunch of blogs onto the page" default layout..

I prefer to call it "the monkeys throwing handfuls of crap at a wall" layout.

Well, I don't think it's quite that bad. I've seen worse.

 

..Al

[Albert]

Just looked through the settings and I do not see a means of changing the number of columns displayed on the Blog index or individual Blogs. I'll have to fix that the hard(er) way. Bastards.

 

..Al

[+batari]

I think I speak for most when I say I liked the way the blogs were before the forum update last summer.

 

That is, kind of like this:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080412074649/www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?automodule=blog

 

It's not so much the format but the way the information was presented all on one page for easy access, that is: Blog name, Member, Entries, View, Last entry desc, Comments, Last comment. The new blogs and previous version had this information scattered around and there was no way to see it all on one page.

Most of this information is presented in the new 'List View', however, I agree that the default layout is less than optimal. I will be changing it back so all the information is in proper columns and formatted better. Again, I haven't had a chance to attack the aesthetics of the blog and stuff like this, but I will be doing so soon.

I can't view "list view" right now to fully comment, but from what I remember, the things I liked the most are gone.

 

Most notable is "most recent activity" replacing "most recent comment" but "most recent activity" doesn't give you a link to actually see what this activity is, while the old version would conveniently bring you to the latest comment (I clicked on this link more than any other.) To find the most recent comment, you needed to go into the blog itself.

 

Also, I don't remember a place where we could see statistics about the entries and particular blogs in the new version.

 

One thing I did like about both is the "favorite blogs" which were pinned on the top. However, that seems to have disappeared and now we have a useless "favorite" icon on the unpinned entries.

Edited March 12, 2010 by batari

[+Random Terrain]

Just looked through the settings and I do not see a means of changing the number of columns displayed on the Blog index or individual Blogs. I'll have to fix that the hard(er) way. Bastards.

So that company really does go out of its way to screw with its customers. Maybe they should steal the Intel tune and have the programmers stand there and sing "dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb."

[Albert]

Just looked through the settings and I do not see a means of changing the number of columns displayed on the Blog index or individual Blogs. I'll have to fix that the hard(er) way. Bastards.

So that company really does go out of its way to screw with its customers. Maybe they should steal the Intel tune and have the programmers stand there and sing "dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb."

Well, not really, no. They did make quite a few improvements in this version and it'll be better once I've spent some time working on it. The Blog module doesn't get as much attention as the main forum software, since the Blog is just an add-on module that probably only a small percentage of their customers purchase. What we should do is make a concrete list of changes we'd like to see once we've used this version for a bit, and then I can post that in the Invision forum as suggestions.

 

Changing the columns is not going to be very difficult at all and will probably only take me a few minutes.

 

..Al

[Albert]

So that company really does go out of its way to screw with its customers. Maybe they should steal the Intel tune and have the programmers stand there and sing "dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb."

Oh, and they are pretty good about listening to their customers, it just sometimes takes them a while to make significant changes. The big changes to the search system that were announced today are an example of this.

 

..Al

[+Random Terrain]

Well, that's good. If they aren't that good at getting it right and making things user-friendly at the beginning, at least they're willing to fix things.

[Albert]

Well, that's good. If they aren't that good at getting it right and making things user-friendly at the beginning, at least they're willing to fix things.

If I had to guess, the main problem would be that they don't spend enough time up front doing design work, and instead program by the seat of their pants. Interestingly, the person who did the most recent Blog update is also responsible for all the great Search changes that are coming. They really need a good user-interface specialist working with them on these projects.

 

They did listen to the many complaints about the Blog list view, which is why they added all the "missing" features back (a lot of information that had been removed, the ability to sort on the different columns, and so forth). Presentation-wise it's not great, but I can fix that. I should also be able to make it the default view pretty easily.

 

..Al

[vdub_bobby]

I had the same experience as batari - I clicked the "view latest comment" link more than any other on the old blog software.

 

Also, the most recent blog software didn't correctly mark a blog as "read" (I almost always had to manually click "Mark as read") and direct links to comments never seemed to work, or only worked in some cases. Is this fixed in the new version?

[Albert]

I had the same experience as batari - I clicked the "view latest comment" link more than any other on the old blog software.

 

Also, the most recent blog software didn't correctly mark a blog as "read" (I almost always had to manually click "Mark as read") and direct links to comments never seemed to work, or only worked in some cases. Is this fixed in the new version?

This should be working properly with the new software, it was known to be broken entirely with the last version of the software (due to changes in the forum software related to how new messages were tracked that were not carried into the blog).

 

You can also subscribe to individual blog entries so you are notified when new comments are posted, which is very nice.

 

..Al

[vdub_bobby]

I had the same experience as batari - I clicked the "view latest comment" link more than any other on the old blog software.

 

Also, the most recent blog software didn't correctly mark a blog as "read" (I almost always had to manually click "Mark as read") and direct links to comments never seemed to work, or only worked in some cases. Is this fixed in the new version?

This should be working properly with the new software, it was known to be broken entirely with the last version of the software (due to changes in the forum software related to how new messages were tracked that were not carried into the blog).

 

You can also subscribe to individual blog entries so you are notified when new comments are posted, which is very nice.

 

..Al

[Albert]

Made a lot of changes today, mostly cosmetic, and still have a ton to do. Every time I scratch one thing off my list, I end up adding one or two more new items. I did get rid of the evil two-column layout on the Blog index as well as individual Blogs.

 

A non-comprehensive list of things I need to address (non-comprehensive as some of the items are in my head):

 

• Possibly modify "List All Blogs" tab color
  
• Fix hideous red Publish button when adding/editing blog
  
• Fix AA blog icon background color
  
• Fix alternating comment colors
  
• Fix left calendar block border
  
• Default to List view
  
• Fix "Recent Entries" block popup menu
  
• Investigate "Action Failed" when attempting to add certainly blocks (Twitter, Friends, etc.)
  
• Fix reputation button in Comments
  
• Blue "Options" drop-down arrow graphic
  
• Make "Subscribe to [blogname]" text a link
  
• Fix Draft blog entry wrapper
  
• Move user photo into blog entry header
  
• Adjust position of first blog entry in Dash view to align with tab
  
• List View: Owner left justified
  
• List View: Split Entries, Comments and Views into three separate columns
  
• Move "Use the Dash/List as blog start" to the top of the page (align with tab above blog entries)
  
• Investigate categories conversion
  
• Fix date in Blog Entry header -- use longer date form plus time (format of forum posts)
  

That's all I have written down at the moment.

 

Btw, in the "List View" in the "Last Activity" column, you can click on the small Space Invaders icon to get a preview of the last blog entry. I'd like to add the last comment info, but not sure I'm going to be able to do that (that's a more significant change).

 

..Al

[+Nathan Strum]

Looks better already.

 

That one entry (Stripped) I mentioned before though, still has the same issue with the images and the Read Full Entry link not showing up.

 

Also, the entries with Artie comics in them have no Read Full Entry link either (presumably, since you can see the full entry). And while you can click on the title to view an entry, having the link show up at the bottom would be good anyway for consistency's sake. Also, some way of enlarging reduced images in a blog's main page would be good. Right now, you have to view an individual entry to do that.

[Albert]

Looks better already.

 

That one entry (Stripped) I mentioned before though, still has the same issue with the images and the Read Full Entry link not showing up.

 

Also, the entries with Artie comics in them have no Read Full Entry link either (presumably, since you can see the full entry). And while you can click on the title to view an entry, having the link show up at the bottom would be good anyway for consistency's sake. Also, some way of enlarging reduced images in a blog's main page would be good. Right now, you have to view an individual entry to do that.

The "Read Full Entry" is surely because the entire entry is already visible. I can always force the link to appear, though. I'll look into expanding images when viewing a blog as opposed to an individual blog entry. As well as the "Stripped" images.

 

..Al

[+Nathan Strum]

The entire Stripped entry isn't visible in the main view... the last paragraph is cut off. Hence my confusion about the link missing from that one.

[Albert]

The entire Stripped entry isn't visible in the main view... the last paragraph is cut off. Hence my confusion about the link missing from that one.

That must be a bug in the code. The template simply displays a shortened version of the blog post that's been stored in the database. I just looked at the code and there's a rather convoluted function, 'cutPost()' that I'm not even going to try to follow, and I most certainly am not going to screw with it.

 

I figured out how to display attachments and full inline images on the main blog index and blog views (which you'll see if you look at your own blog). However, I have to rebuild ALL blog content in order for this to be reflected globally, however, I don't see a way to do that. This can be manually done by simply editing a blog entry and publishing again. I'm going to post a question on Invision's forum now to see if there is a proper way of rebuilding all the Blog content.

 

Any new Blog entries will display the full images. I also increased the size of the Blog excerpt from 350 characters to 1,000 characters.

 

Also, I have forced "Read Full Entry" to always display, regardless if the full blog post is visible or not.

 

..Al

[Christophero Sly]

I did get rid of the evil two-column layout on the Blog index as well as individual Blogs.

 

[+Random Terrain]

Thanks again for getting this stuff fixed. Here's a video you can watch at the end of a hard day's work to keep you from getting burned out:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLb6BdyAWTo&fmt=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqH9ItN7_lo&rel=0&fmt=18

 

[vdub_bobby]

Looks much better; but is there any way to list just the blogs you've marked as "Favorites"? Or at least make the Favorites Sidebar list the blogs with the most recently updated blog on top? Having the oldest blog on top just seems asinine.

[Albert]

Looks much better; but is there any way to list just the blogs you've marked as "Favorites"? Or at least make the Favorites Sidebar list the blogs with the most recently updated blog on top? Having the oldest blog on top just seems asinine.

I can add that to my list of things to look at once I get the more basic items out of the way.

 

..Al

[+batari]

Looks good so far. I would seriously consider making list view the default. Now all you need is a a way to pin favorite blogs and a link directing us to the latest comment/activity

[+Nathan Strum]

By the way... could you post in this thread before the next time you take the blogs offline? I was midway through typing something up yesterday, and when I went to post it - poof. The blogs were offline and what I had typed was lost. (Usually, I copy everything before clicking post anyway, but I didn't this time.)

[+Random Terrain]

I started adding a few categories and I noticed that if I click on a category, the left column is small again:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/blog/blog-120/cat-5-batari-basic-atari-2600

 

Thought you might want to know about it in case you missed it.

[Albert]

Looks good so far. I would seriously consider making list view the default. Now all you need is a a way to pin favorite blogs and a link directing us to the latest comment/activity

Yes, I am going to make the List View the default. Should not be too difficult.

 

By the way... could you post in this thread before the next time you take the blogs offline? I was midway through typing something up yesterday, and when I went to post it - poof. The blogs were offline and what I had typed was lost. (Usually, I copy everything before clicking post anyway, but I didn't this time.)

I apologize, that really sucks. The forum really should save the text if it goes online when you do a "Post" operation. I know the forum does this if you get an error when posting (it saves your text in a text box for you), so it's not like there isn't already a precedent for it. I'll probably do any future work without taking the Blogs module offline.

 

I started adding a few categories and I noticed that if I click on a category, the left column is small again:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/blog/blog-120/cat-5-batari-basic-atari-2600

 

Thought you might want to know about it in case you missed it.

Thanks, I hadn't seen that yet but I'll take care of it. Should be a simple fix.

 

..Al

[+Random Terrain]

Found one more thing that you may not know about. It seems the blog preview can't show a quote box. (I don't mean the preview button, I mean the preview of a blog before you click to see more.)

Edited March 15, 2010 by Random Terrain