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Journal The Only Constant is Change 86

Journal by slashdotblog

Slashdot Engineering has been on a cycle of continuous improvement and continuous deployment for the past few months -- ten code launches so far this year. Today we're announcing a few feature enhancements, and another announcement we think you'll welcome.

First, we've smoothed the way videos show up on the site. Whatever's on the other side of a given link (text or video), Slashdot itself is about conversations. So we've made our videos fit better into the page and the Slashdot comment system, rather than feeling like they're on a separate site. Please check out the new video page. (Also, stay tuned: we'll be bringing you video from other sources, too, with reviews, product close-ups, how-tos, and more.)

Secondly, we've removed the left-hand navigation links and tuned the top-of-page navigation bar. We recognize folks access the site with a huge range of browsers and platforms, and this provides more real estate, sacrificing links that metrics show were largely unused.

And effective today, we've jettisoned the Slashdot Beta platform out the side portal. Slashdot has always been a bit quirky, and "user friendly" is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. After heavily experimenting on the Beta platform and splitting traffic between Classic and Beta, we've made some decisions about which platform changes ultimately make sense: starting today, we're unifying users back on our Classic platform.

If you had fallen in love with Beta and are now seeing Classic for the first time, our apologies. But if you were one of the users who commented on the superiority of the Classic UX, we agree. In any case and as much as ever, your feedback is welcome at feedback@slashdot.org. If you notice any weirdness that might be due to our efforts to reconcile URLs that reach specific parts of the Beta site, please let us know. A screenshot is always worth a thousand words, and sometimes it seems as though the Devil lives in URLs.

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The Only Constant is Change More

The Only Constant is Change

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  • wow, much improved! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I've felt that /. has deteriorated from a UI perspective since I've been using it (yes since the very early days), and I've seen the modern web 2.0 trend of fitting 3 words on a page, rather than all the content that I'm interested in.

    The beta annoyed me and I really didn't like it, though I assumed we were destined towards it. I hate to think I just don't like change because it's different, but I've gotta say the new tweaking IMO is far superior! It's fantastic, thanks for doing some research and seeing wh

  • Really, really need to stop autoplaying videos (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sowelu ( 713889 ) on Thursday February 26, 2015 @07:08PM (#49142569)

    I pretty much always avoid the video articles because they autoplay, you can't pause ads (don't care about skipping), and I think they're also missing volume and mute.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Soulskill ( 1459 ) Works for Slashdot

      I think this is fixed now. Try this page [slashdot.org] -- if it autoplays for you, please let us know. We're working on adding a volume control, as well, but it's not implemented yet.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sowelu ( 713889 )

        Cool, looks good! Thank you! The styles are a bit wonky right now, the article summary is mostly hidden behind the video itself in Chrome, but I'm guessing that'll get hashed out along with everything else. (or maybe my browser is just using a cached css file, who knows)

      • Another thing: I cannot post new top-level comments to this topic. There is no button to do that. I can only reply.

        • Neither can I, so I'll reply to your reply. I'm so glad that one web site in the world finally stops wasting my screen real estate. The width is actually used for content, not cruft! And once side navigation is scroll past, the comments actually take up the width of my screen. It's like someone who actually uses web sites finally designed on.

  • Some minor bugs to report (Score:3)

    by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Thursday February 26, 2015 @07:34PM (#49142791)

    My rig: Firefox 36 on Windows 7:

    * Signatures are overlapped by the Reply To This, Parent, and Share links.

    * The Post and Load All Comments buttons at the top of the page are, in their default state, the same color as the dark green background, with dark grey text, making them barely readable. They turn gray when I mouse over them.

    * The Post, Moderate, Moderator Help, and Delete buttons at the bottom of the page seem to be extending past the top of the dark green bar, and are overlapping with the advertisement content.

    * After hitting the "Preview" button, the three new buttons "Submit", "Continue Editing", and "Preview" buttons overlap the yellow bar just above them.

    * After hitting the "Preview" button, the user is presented with another "Preview" button, which of course is completely redundant.

  • The beta site was poor and added a bunch of bad requirements. It's excellent that Slashdot won't go down the road that so many poor sites traveled. Solid decisions.

    • This new version of "classic" isn't an improvement either. Now I'm dizzy, lost and disorriented. Left hand links kept the text meat in the middle a manageable width. Reading from deviant LTS Firefox on Openbsd 5.6 stable.
      • Also... Seriously what happened to buttons.
        • I'm trying to come up with an apt description of how disappointing this "classic" redesign is and all I and all I can say is this morning everything was fine. Now it looks like some GNAA trolls mashed up the worst aspects of "classic" with the beta no one wanted.

  • As someone who was quite vocal against Beta in the original announcement article, I've got to say that this about-face is a pleasant surprise. I don't love everything about it, but it's a far sight better than what we saw on the beta site. Glad to see the powers that be came to their senses, and were not persuaded by UX blowhards.

    One bug/design issue is with the comment margins. Here's what I'm seeing in Firefox: http://i.imgur.com/YPhBVI0.png [imgur.com]

    Playing with the CSS, I think this is easier on the eyes and

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Soulskill ( 1459 ) Works for Slashdot

      Thanks for the suggestions. We haven't done anything design-wise for comment pages yet, but it'll probably happen soon.

      Unicode support is always on our list, but keeps getting pushed back. I'll bring it up again and see if we have the time.

  • at least on iceweasel 31.4.0 on debian, the "Post" button on articles is invisible unless the mouse is over it.

  • There are still problems (missing / invisible buttons for "post" and "load all comments") but this is a huge step in the right direction :-) Thank you for listening.

  • And no obvious replacement for it, for some things.

    I can get to journal pages, friends, foes, etc by typing in the url, but if someone doesn't already know that, it'll be hard to find. These links were in the left menu on the user page, but they're gone now as well as the left menu on the main page.

    (Maybe I'm missing something obvious.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Soulskill ( 1459 ) Works for Slashdot

      No, you're not missing anything -- this is on our list to fix. My apologies for the inconvenience until we do.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hartree ( 191324 )

        This is definitely in the "first world problems" class.

        You don't expect a rollout to not have minor issues. And that's what this kind of feedback is for. :)

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by zidium ( 2550286 )

          Compared to how god awful Beta was and how forcing it on me would force me to become a literal Slashdot Refugee, I have to say, I will gladly sacrifice these missing links for the possibility of being able to use Slashdot for 10 more years!!

          I wish they could have told us about this decision to jettison it MONTHS ago when they started working on it!! I've been living with a very real spectre of not being able to daily visit a site I absolutely love and is a big part of my entire adult life (17+ years) at ANY

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      These menus should be back now with our first round of fixes which was just deployed.

  • Hi., since today there is no more button to just continue reading the stories as they came. All i see is a row of buttons at the end with 'today','thursday','wednesday', etc. Why no simple 'previous' button to just continue from what you see now? Or is this a bug?

  • I don't see any way to change the page style. I've been all through the "settings" menu. I want a dark page. I do NOT want an all-white page, with some black print sprinkled across it. I want a dark theme, preferably black. Anything dark though. Come on guys, let's see some choice here!

  • This. This kind of decision-making is why you never hear about the "Slashdot Effect" anymore. Because you're driving away the people who would normally click on your links.

  • You've done away with the star next to the "Slashdot" title at the top of the page.

    This was very useful for seeing what the most popular stories were for the past week, month, and quarter.

    I hope you bring back the star and add "year" to it also.

  • Great, but could you please tell me how I can change my signature? I've looked in the Options and Account settings and can't find it anywhere.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zieroh ( 307208 )

      I seem to be suffering from the same thing. Can't figure out where to edit my sig.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zieroh ( 307208 )

      Okay, found it, but it's obnoxiously hidden. Go to the Slashdot FAQ Page [slashdot.org] and click "Login" in the upper-right-hand corner (even though you're already logged in). Type in your credentials, and login. You'll then go to your account screen where you can actually edit your sig (and a few other things).

      I can't find any other way to get there, and that particular path is as obscure as it gets.

  • Quick Update (Score:5, Informative)

    by Soulskill ( 1459 ) Works for Slashdot on Friday February 27, 2015 @03:49PM (#49149149)

    We've just rolled out several bug fixes.

    • The Post button (and similar) should no longer be hidden.
    • The Older/Newer buttons on the front page should be back.
    • Tags should now be visible.
    • The left-hand navigation on user pages should be back.
    • We've fixed some of the responsiveness issues with the new header (more to do yet).
    • Contrast on Slashbox titles should be fixed.

    We still have more to fix, and we're going to get started on that.

    • I came here to this link via a soylentnews article, my source of news that slashdot used to fulfill. This place feels kind of second rate now. I can't shake the feeling that any visit to slashdot can be the one management decides to try and shove something else down my throat.

      Look at this load of bullshit: "But if you were one of the users who commented on the superiority of the Classic UX, we agree." No, you didn't agree. How long did you try to push that pile of shit against all the complaints and boy

  • The top menu does not display link text in opera on android. Just a bevy of square placeholders. the topics menu renders as well as the links at the bottom; it's only the very top of the page near the logo. Luckily i was already logged in.

  • "Read the rest of this comment..." link appears sometimes even when there is no rest of comment (or is invisible whitespace?)
    Not related to recent changes, has been happening for awhile

    On this page [slashdot.org]
    search for 49153131
    does not happen when individual message page is shown, only on static discussion page.

    what it looks like [photobucket.com]

    Just a peeve.
    The Prev and Older buttons are back. Yay!
    Thanks and keep up the good work, putting up with us whiny malcontents.

  • While I think the new layout is much better than beta, it has broken my normal Slashdot reading experience.
    I was reading using Google Chrome on a Microsoft Surface Pro 3.... vertically. I tend to browse a lot of news vertically. This limits the vertical screen resolution.

    The old slashdot layout imposed a minimum screen width and would provide a horizontal scrollbar which allowed me to see the stories without a sidebar visible.
    The new slashdot layout locks into the screen resolution such that the stories on

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Soulskill ( 1459 ) Works for Slashdot

      Thanks for noting this. I've raised it with our UI guy, and hopefully we'll get that fixed soon.

      • Cheers, thanks for replying.

        I must say the change this time is being handled very well compared to beta.

        In case you need any further information here's a screenshot of what I'm seeing [dropbox.com]

        Screen resolution is 1440x2160 and because of the small HDPI screen I browse with a 150% zoom on Chrome.
        Of note is the topics bar already runs off the screen on the right but the main content is squished into just the standard browser width.

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