CmdrTaco's Journal: WTB AJAX Engineer (ok, hire really)

Now that the redesign contest is over, we've mostly finished up the implementation. A number of obnoxious issues turned up (they always do!) but they've mostly been dealt with. I think we might be crashing a beta version of opera, and a few less used browsers have some compatibility problems, as well a few menus and lesser seen widgets are skinned yet with older versions of the site design. Mostly that just is showing us places that weren't properly DIVd and CLASSd when we moved to CSS.

But the dust is settling so we can start working on our next project which I'm excited to say actually has the approval to hire an engineer. So if you are an experienced programmer with the fancy web20 ajax mojo on his resume, send it my way. This person will be working on the new discussion system, on dynamic user preferences, and some surprises that we've been working on for awhile now that doesn't really have user interfaces yet. I guess send me the usual stuff- location, salary requirements, experience, resume etc. I've got a few names already. Relocation isn't required, but being in michigan wouldn't hurt for occasional meetings.

Speaking of the new discussion stuff, it's worth noting that subscribers usually see beta functionality first. Right now they can see the new CSS/DOM/Javascript/Dynamic/Fancypants discussion system. It's buggy, slow, and damnit better than the version live on the site if you have a fast computer and a web browser that doesn't choke on it. There are a few minor features left for us to implement, and then we hope to start rolling it out as an optional thing for an ever widening pool of beta testers. I'm really excited.

One of the best things about D2 is that it dramatically cuts the need to load new pages. You can expand/contract threads dynamically. The problem with this is that we have a serious information overload. So we need a new user interface to accomodate this. Currently we have a simple drop down menu of thresholds. The new version has at least 2 seperate thresholds ('Visible' and 'Abbreviated'). So figuring out an intuitive and compatible way to view that information is an interesting challange. As always, I'm open to ideas so feel free to shoot emails my way. The current version simply has More/Less and Better/Worse buttons. This is a nasty kludge that won't cut it in the future.

In less interesting news, my alliance guild dropped nef for the second time last sunday. It's a really fun fight. I finally saw the Wallace & Gromit movie and really loved it. I still haven't seen the season finale of The Sopranos. X-Men was popcorn fluff, but I was at least entertained. And re-heated sweet & sour chicken from the local chinese take-out place does not taste nearly as good as it did last night.

Now go about your day.