Slashdot Discussion2 In Beta 421
The primary reason for discussion2 was to get beyond the pain in the ass that is navigating large discussion threads on Slashdot. You know the problem: once threads get deep, you have to click repeatedly, waiting for tabs to load. Or even when you encounter a long comment, you have to wait to get the full comment text.
Cool Things D2 Does Now
- Allows you to change your threshold, open and close threads, and expand long comments in place, without ever loading a new page.
- Allows you to moderate a comment without clicking a save-button that loses your place in a thread.
- A new, more intuitive user interface that more clearly displays the nature of comment thresholds.
- Vastly Improved threaded view that allows you to see more of the discussion in less space, without clutter.
Some items on the TODO list (more or less in order of priority)
- Make it Progressive - Right now D2 simply gets all the comments in a discussion. This sucks. We need to write a task to retrieve only appropriate comments. So if you are at Score:4 threshold, we don't bother retrieving the full text of all comments at Score:-1. And even better, if someone moderates or posts a comment, we need to update the page you are reading to reflect those changes. Again, the goal here is that once you load a page, you don't need to close it until you are done with the discussion. This actually has MANY subtle problems, like how do you notify a user when a thread 10 pages up has been replied to.
- Make it Fast Actually I think solving #1 will mostly solve #2 at the same time. Since right now we get the full discussion, we are getting WAY to much data. We need to get say 50 comments at a time, not all 1000. This will give your browser time to catch up and make the whole thing "Feel" faster. Right now, on my machine a 200-300 comment page is very usable, but to much larger and it starts slowing down. This is all machine dependent. I'm sure there are good javascript tricks that would help improve performance.
- In-Place Posting You should be able to post a comment without reloading a page. Right now you can just open a tab, but then you are looking at a stale discussion. This isn't that hard either- especially once we finish #1. Just need to open the reply page in a div, and when you save, make sure that the new comment is properly retrieved and inserted into the thread. But there's some subtle stuff here like how to handle previews. We need to change some of our error handling- the current system uses previews as an opportunity to warn readers about things that are "Wrong" about their comment. We need to figure out how to do that without launching new pages. It's not hard, but it'll take some time.
- Compatibility ok so Opera's broken Javascript implementation won't work unless they fix their browser, but we'd like to make at least IE work for the trivial percentage of Slashdot readers forced to use IE by their corporate overloads. But since 2/3rds of you use Firefox, fixing IE is just not at the top of my priority list... I'd rather make it work better for the majority. And as every web developer knows, cross browser platform compatibility can be a real bitch. But before we are out of beta, it probably would be nice to get IE functional, if only for other websites using our source code that actually have IE as the dominant population.
- Smooth out the UI there are a lot of parts to this problem. Right now the threshold change is buttons but it should actually be draggable, I'd like the widget to toggle from the top to the side, but need to build a horizontal version of the widget. The expansion/contraction of comments and threads have weird functionality that could be improved- for example there is a difference between expanding a comment and expanding a thread. And there's new concepts like expanding a child vs expanding an entire thread vs expanding "Siblings" vs expanding hidden children vs visible children. These are very interesting user interface questions that we'll start working out soon.
- Rethink What Old Functionality By this I primarily mean discussion filters and ordering. By default D2 uses a thread ordered, chronological display. The old system had many other sort modes, but I'm not how sure how effective these are once threaded. So I may simply leave the old system in place for users who want to see a flat discussion ignorant of threads ordered by date or score. Since this is only a tiny percentage of users, I figure it can wait.
Conclusion
A lot of the stuff you see in D2 is just javascript you can easily play with yourself. We haven't mangled it or anything so you js haxx0rz are welcome to submit patches for interesting ideas. We don't have a backend for progressive rendering, but there are a LOT of features that we want to implement that wouldn't even require you to touch the perl. Of course if you're willing to hack perl, it's all up on the website not that anyone ever actually bothers to contribute anything more than ideas and complaints, but it sure never hurts to ask!
Already around 13,000 of you are using Discussion2. We're a ways off from flipping a switch to make it the default for everyone, but it's already substantially better for users with fast computers and Firefox. Hopefully in a few more weeks it will be good enough for everyone. Thanks for the help along the way. We hope you like the new system... I sure do. And mad props to Nate & Pudge for their work on this...
Instant Moderation Please! (Score:5, Interesting)
Apart from that, it's a vast improvement. Especially being able to selectively browse comments that are below the threshold value, without loosing track of the conversation.
Hasn't been subscriber only for a while... (Score:5, Interesting)
Tried it, didn't like it (Score:5, Interesting)
What I'd really like is an option to have them all expanded by default, but allow me to close the comment blocks on discussions that are obviously going nowhere.
Doesn't work with IE or Opera (Score:5, Interesting)
Man, I sound like a born-again or something...
Discussion2 Observations (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been using Discussion2 for about 2 weeks now, and I, for one, offer my congradulations. As noted above, it has a few kinks, but overall, it is a vast improvement over the previous layout. I find myself reading much deeper into comments, and the "HUD" makes it easy to see how much time I waste here on /. ;)
Few annoyances I must note, however:
Overall, though, it's a vast improvement over the past system. Keep up the good work!
PITA (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe after they work out some of the speed issues and the like, it'll be great. But for now, it can't touch "-1, Nested, Highest Scores First" comment browsing.
i've grown to like it (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been using D2 for a few weeks now, and although it's occasionally doing things that surprise me, I've grown to like it a lot.
I used to have to open hidden thread responses in a separate tab; now I can just display them inline. That change alone is worth any pain with the new system.
I noticed inline moderation yesterday too. That surprised me, and I'm not certain I like it - I used to go through an entire discussion and moderate, then check whether I'd tried to moderate more or less posts than I had mod points. If I'd gone over-budget I could then prioritise the use of the mod points. The inline moderation means that once I've selected a moderation, it's used. It's also less forgiving of accidental selection in the drop-down.
The other issue I've noticed is that for very large discussions (700+ posts) Firefox can report that processing the Javascript has taken too long. I get offered the choice of cancelling processing the script, or continuing. Once I'd realised what was causing this and just started hitting 'continue' it hasn't prevented the site working properly, just irritated me. But the performance modifications will probably resolve that.
Inline replies sound good - I'll welcome that.
Overall, given the choice, even with the existing implementation and its occasional flaws, I like it, and I'd prefer to keep it to the old discussion format.
Not picking a fight here, just my opinion (Score:2, Interesting)
That being said, I'll keep my copy of FF around and periodically look at Slashdot and other various sites, but to be perfectally honest, I think its font rendering systems and layout is ugly (too block'ish') for my taste.
Regards,
MBC1977,
(US Marine, College Student, and Good Guy!)
Re:Define hypocrisy (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:IE not so important... (Score:5, Interesting)
Its also ironic when we were "fringe" users and used browsers like various gecko based browsers or KHTML based browsers, had something like 10% marketshare and we complained that we ere not a target, nor a priority since 90% of the people used IE.
Wow, how things have changed.
Now, with the slashdot rewrite, I have 2 suggestions, one is old and one is new.
I know it is the desire for slashdot to reward fast over good, and its OK to have the bunches of pirst fost posts and whatnot, but I think its not worth rewarding earlier posts at the same thread level. By that if someone makes a witty one liner that provokes 10-20 good replies, only the top 3 or so good ones are likely to start a new thread. So, I would suggest randomizing the display of posts at any given thread level to increase the deeper threading and discussions vs the arbitrarily rewarding the top ones simply because they smashed the return button faster, yet faster may or may not be better.
Another thing I would suggest is that the message system be a little more sane and/or having more detailed information regarding the moderations to a given post. Right now if you get a message about a reply to one of your posts, you go to a list of them, and then you can either click on the your post or the reply or the article or other options. To me its an unnecessary click to get that info from the second page, and should be on the first (dunno if ad views come into play here or not), but it seems like an unnecessary hit on the DB and extra clicks for nothing. Another thing are the messages regarding moderation. Too many clicks here too, and too much irrelevant info. Some times I have a laundry list of comments that have + this - that, etc, and its easier just to look at my posting history to see what is going on via a summary. I would however like to know the raw data vs a percentage of how many times something has been moderated. Especially when I post something "controversial" and get bunches of + and - mods, but I would like to know if I had 100 + mods and 100 - mods to end up at 0 or if it was 1 + mod and 1 - mod.
Otherwise, I would welcome the expanding of threads with DHTML/layers or whatever makes that happen similar to the tags expansion. Slashdot has grown up over the years like me, but kinda slow like me too
Re:Tried it, didn't like it (Score:5, Interesting)
It took me 5 minutes and 20-30 mouse clicks to figure out two things:
1) You must have images turned on. The "up arrow" and "down arrow" things are represented in non-image mode by a bunch of asterisks, and there's nothing to indicate that they're live.
2) You must have javashit turned on. OK, I wasn't that surprised by the need for Javascript since this is supposedly the new AJAX hawtness, but I was surprised that it failed so ungracefully.
3) There's a lag (because we're dealing with Javascript) between the mouse click and the re-rendering of the page and the threshold box/menu.
4) There's an annoying thing about the threshold box, in that if all I want to do is crank it to "80 full / 0 abbreviated / 0 hidden" (I have zero interest ever seeing an abbreviated comment. This isn't Digg - It's OK to say something that takes more than one line to express.), I've gotta reposition the mouse after every click on the threshold box.
How about we find a middle ground: Website uses D2, but fails gracefully: If Javascript is disabled, it reverts back to D1.
(Yeah, I disable Javascript wherever possible. Google Maps and online shopping/banking are probably the only exceptions I make to this rule. I'm also occasionally on bandwidth-restricted connections, and have developed a habit of browsing as lean as possible. If a website's contents are mostly text, it should be just as usable with its images, javascript, and even colors/fonts overridden. I still prefer a good serif font over the "new" default, too :)
Can we still get Highest-Ranked- or Newest-First? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, if I look at a discussion once, and then go back to it later, the new stuff is all way at the bottom - it'd be nice to have the option of seeing it at the top.
New/old flag (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IE not so important... (Score:4, Interesting)
I do however think close attention should be paid to IE7 on two fronts, because very shortly, IE7 is going to be the dominant browser in use:
1) Make a solid effort to make this site work in IE7
2) Report as soon as possible all the problems in IE7 that make supporting this site in IE7 (as opposed to FireFox, Opera, and others) difficult to Microsoft so they can prioritize those fixes for IE7 GA, or at the very least, in a 7.0.1 patch or update in the near future.
Re:Define hypocrisy (Score:4, Interesting)
I work in an office that settled on IE a long time ago... before Firefox and before free Opera. This was back when IE simply was the best browser because Netscape had stagnated, Mozilla wasn't even in beta, and Microsoft's anti-competitive tactics worked.
The workstation images still have IE as the only browser by default, and the majority of the office doesn't have the privalege of installing their own software due to all the stupid things users can get up to.
Anyone who really wants it gets Firefox, including non-tech users who mention to one of the admins that they'd like it. Most of the office, however, is far too busy with work to worry about which browser they have installed. IE works and is sufficiently secured by our NT admins to be useable and safe for the majority of our users, including geeks and the tech-saavy.
These are not stupid or uneducated people. They use Firefox at home. If they hit Slashdot from work, they're likely to be doing it via IE.
Re:Define hypocrisy (Score:2, Interesting)
I am a "business user" that has to evaluate requests for changes that involve IT work every day. I get awfully tired of seeing random requests that will 1) not benefit the business, 2) not save or make us any money, and 3) are quantified as good projects because "it will make it a lot easier to do XYZ." Guess what, we're all busy here, so bitching about a feature that you don't have doesn't make my life any less busy when there are a dozen other projects I could be working on to actually save money, time, and labor for the company as a whole. This is exactly why the last paragraph smacks users like you and requests that improvements be contributed by those of you who don't like what is currently in place rather than just complaining about it.
Yet another "Broken JavaScript" comment (Score:2, Interesting)
I've got a gut feeling that's just yet another "It's not bug-compatible with $browser_i_love_so_much" kind of problem.