Gentle Kossians,
Just a week has passed with the new Ajax Comments system in place on Daily Kos. And we haven't forgotten you and any of your travails with this site. Now in place are numerous bugfixes which will make your enjoyment of the new Ajax comments system all the more rewarding.
Continue overleaf for the list, and please use this thread to report ongoing problems.
To be sure any pages you have open get the new code, you can hold down the shift-key and press your browser's reload button. You only have to do this once per code upgrade, and most likely, you don't even have to do it once, I'm just making sure kind of thing.
FIXED BUGS
- Find (on this page) now works in IE6 for Windows, most of the time. It still won't work while a refresh is underway (this will affect those on dialup especially as their refreshes take for ever). Turning autorefresh off can cut down on the error messages. Even so, the error message is harmless and you can try Finding again, without reloading the page, and you should be able to do so once the internal refresh system isn't active. It apparently reveals a bug in IE that I can't find documented anywhere (Find on page with an altered, dynamically created, hidden iframe?).
- The "Internet Explorer cannot load this page...Operation Aborted" error message (no I don't write these messages, trust me) should no longer appear. The problem was clicking to open a comment before the ads had finished loading. That has now been prevented from colliding.
- Scrolling performance on slow machines should be dramatically improved, although while the refresh system is active it will again be jumpy. It's jumpy when you're doing a manual reload too, you've just gotten used to that.
- There should also be less performance problems during refreshes on slower machines as well.
- Complex URLs (especially those hideous ones from Yahoo News) are now supported both pasting directly into the comment field and via the Link editor.
- Numerous fixes have been made to the client-side autoformatter. You can now have multiple bracket links on one line, including dkosopedia links. You can have backslashes in front of tags, brackets and other literals that you are using to explain things to other users. Hyphens form bullet lists like asterisks do.
- Curly quotes and foreign characters are now supported (as of a couple days ago in fact). If you can type it, we can display it. Go ahead and use your favorite word processor (even those from Microsoft) to edit your comments if you wish.
- The client has been given code to prevent double-postings; we are still waiting on the server to be updated to block such redundancies.
KNOWN BUGS REMAINING:
- Duplicate posts are possible
- Sometimes in small threads one user is left without ratings controls
- There are reports that ratings can be changed by keypresses after they are set. We can no longer duplicate these on the recommended browsers, however. It may be an issue with AdBlock which we do not support (after all, it does not support us).
- [new] markers can come back on a manual reload.
ISSUES WE'LL JUST HAVE TO LIVE WITH
Some things are out of our control and depend on the browser. It would be costly or impossible to try to compensate for them.
- Navigating to another page, then pressing the Back button will display the page from the last time you manually loaded/reloaded it. Workaround: Right-click (ctrl-click on Mac) the link and open it in a new window or tab.
- Doing so (navigating then pressing the back button) with the comment editor open may wipe your comment text.
- If a page takes a long time to load, you might be able to beat the script from removing the Rate All button and rewiring the links. You will be in legacy mode until the script runs and the Rate All buttons disappear...be patient.
- Safari on Mac OS 10.2 Jaguar is not supported (see below).
REPORTING BUGS
Please let us know of additional problems. When you do so, it is important we are able to duplicate them on our test machines. Please provide with each report:
- Browser and version
- OS and version
- Bandwidth (56K dialup, 1.5MB Cable, etc)
- Processor GHz and RAM
I look forward to wrapping up the comments section shortly and moving on to the next stage of Ajaxifying Daily Kos. The feedback we have been receiving is extremely gratifying. This is a wonderful community to be working for.
Cheers,
peeder
DAILY KOS AJAX COMPATIBILITY
Common Considerations:
The site will look and work much like the old site does with JavaScript disabled, or with browsers that don't support Ajax (old ones, mobile phones like the treo, etc.). This is called "legacy mode". The technology that makes that support so smooth, by the way, has the lovely name "progressive enhancement."
WINDOWS
Recommended Browser: Firefox 1.5
Firefox 1.5/1.07:
- No known issues, but staying up-to-date is recommended
- Greasemonkey extension is emphatically NOT supported: if you load that hack onto your browser, uninstall it before reporting problems.
Internet Explorer 6 (Including AOL Explorer and Netscape 8 in IE mode when IE 6 installed):
- Links created with link editor are pasted in at the end of comments. They can of course be moved from there with a cut and paste.
- Animations are disabled
- Find (on this page) will bring up an error message when done during a refresh. These can be safely dismissed and tried again in a few seconds. Turning off Autorefresh will help avoid this problem.
- Autorefresh may cause periodic "clicking" sounds as it loads (the same sounds as if you were pressing the reload button manually); these can be turned off in the Sounds tab of the Sounds Control Panel: Set the "Start Navigation" sound to "(None)".
- Renders faster than Firefox, but JavaScript is slower
- IE7 beta 2 "works" much like IE6
Internet Explorer 5.5:
* All IE6 problems. Even so, upgrading is recommended.
Internet Explorer 5.0, Netscape 4 and earlier are all stuck in legacy mode (no Ajax).
Opera 8.5:
- Autorefresh sometimes makes comments disappear, sometimes doesn't work
- Back button may sometimes require numerous presses (use rewind button)
- Parent links on comments in /story mode open an ugly page instead of scrolling up.
- These issues, true for all Opera platforms, will be fixed in Opera 9.x
MACINTOSH
Recommended Browser: Safari
Safari 2.x (on 10.4 Tiger) / 1.3x (on 10.3 Panther):
- No known issues provided Safari is updated via Software Update
Safari 0.x/1.x (Early versions on 10.2 Jaguar):
- These browsers are not supported.
- The site will render, but some links will not be clickable
Firefox 1.5.0.1/1.07/Netscape 7.2:
- Should now work fine.
- Not as fast as Safari, or as pretty.
Camino 1.0:
- Will support Ajax usage on 10.2 Jaguar
Opera 8.5:
* Same problems as Windows Opera 8.5
Internet Explorer 5.2:
- Uses legacy mode...no Ajax support
- May be best browser for 10.2 Jaguar and earlier
LINUX
Recommended Browser: Firefox 1.5
Firefox 1.5:
Konqueror 3.4:
- Has some problems booting up these scripts; first comment load fails and sometimes it falls into a loop when first loaded. Not recommended; Mozilla/Firefox or Opera would be better bets.