Now that the devs are back in full swing, it seemed like a good time to provide an update from DKHQ.
The current priority is speed. Our server side scripting is blazing fast, but the code that renders on your browser (called “client-side”) is less-than-optimal. On some browser and OS configurations it runs great. On others, not so great.
While the devs work on that, we’ve also been sketching out a new story page, the one I’ve included above. This will address a bunch of user feedback, including pushing comments to the left margin. As I discussed Friday, recirculation is down, so this new story page will include more prominent linkage to the home page, as well as (tentatively) the rec list. Love it or hate it, the rec list is the most-clicked sidebar on the site.
This new layout has been kicked over to the designer who will come up with mockups at various sizes (remember, we have to re-lay stuff out for screens of various widths). And after that? Some CSS magic. As part of that process, we also hope to fix a lot of the weird spacing and typographical issues that bedevil the site.
This won’t be done by Friday, and much depends on how much back-and-forth we end up with the designer, but it’s definitely en route.
Two other big feature fixes on our agenda are the single-comment page, and the story/diary list-view page. We’re going to hack together a simple solution for the short term, and worry about beautification later. The single-comment page, in particular, I hope becomes obsolete with a genuinely functional comment-replies page. That project has moved up on my priorities list but will happen post-transition (which includes porting over the last few pages still running under the old code base, like group story queues, user profile page, tag pages, etc).
The last two fixes I’ve prioritized are collapsible sidebar boxes (rec list, most shared, etc), and collapsing all comments.
Alongside all that above are dozens of smaller bug fixes and tweaks. But from a big-picture standpoint, the stuff above is highest priority.