A new day, a new haul of bugfixes reeled in to smooth your Daily Kos experience.
Most notably, a comprehensive QA run on Linux, with important results and a conclusion for Linux users.
As always, please use this thread to report problems you are having once you reload in the new code.
The fix list, known bug list, compatibility chart and Linux results can be accessed by pressing There's More:
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
- Always is selected for your preferences when you initially load. As you make changes, it will be unselected though. Your most recent preference setting, however, is intact...don't worry.
- Scrolling with the spacebar after rating a comment should now work.
- Accidentally troll rating someone by scrolling after rating (and switching windows or tabs in the interim) should now be blocked. Sorry if any toes were stepped on accidentally.
- Scrolling performance on slow machines may be somewhat improved again, 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.
- The startup process has been optimized, so loading a page should be a bit quicker.
- Complex URLs (now the ones from search engines, including Google and our own jotter) are now supported both pasting directly into the comment field and via the Link editor.
- Dkosopedia links using [[Double Brackets]] have been updated to the new Dkosopedia URL.
- More fixes have been made to the client-side autoformatter. You can now have multiple bracket links on one line.
- Curly quotes and foreign characters are now supported in the subject line by the client (we're still waiting on the server to support them). However, these may trim the length of your subject as they are internally about 7 characters long and subjects are limited to 49 characters. Check your previews.
- Opera now has fewer problems with its refresh system, but Opera 9 will fix the issue once and for all.
KNOWN BUGS REMAINING:
- Duplicate posts are possible: The client has been given code to prevent double-postings; we are still waiting on the server to be updated to block such redundancies.
- People are losing and regaining Trusted User status randomly. It has happened to me even.
- Sometimes in small threads one user is left without ratings controls
- [new] markers can come back on a manual reload.
- Foreign characters and curly quotes in subject lines appear something like &x2018;
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.
- Doing so 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).
LINUX ISSUES
The linux contingent at Daily Kos is loud (and some of its members frankly rude...completely incongruous with the Open Source culture). There's been a lot of complaining about linux support, which amounts to 2% of the Daily Kos reader base. I spent several hours today qualifying on Linux and attempting optimizations and frankly I don't think there's much I can do other than strongly recommend Mozilla 1.7.12 as your browser.
The major complaint is that Firefox 1.5.0.1 scrolls slowly. I ran some tests, turning JavaScript on and off, after doing a major revision of the idle sensing function to take any scrolling callbacks out of the loop. I think you'll be interested in what I found:
Time to scroll 590 expanded comments with JavaScript off, by holding down the Page Down key:
Mozilla 1.7.12: 5.9 seconds
Firefox 1.5.0.1: 123.1 seconds.
Turning JavaScript on made little difference. The Firefox scrolling time in this test on my Windows machine, a different box, is 10 seconds.
We are using valid XHTML (largely...some things have yet to be updated, and some user-entered markup is bad) and valid CSS layouts. These should render faster than the old table-based layouts, indeed in our initial tests every browser rendered CSS faster other than Firefox. Opera in fact had a 2x improvement. Firefox on Windows had a 10% decrease. Firefox on linux looks like an absolute lost cause, at least for scrolling.
Yet Mozilla 1.7.12 is fine. It skips rendering much of the page in that test, while Firefox insists on displaying every page. That makes Mozilla much more usable. If you have to use Firefox on linux, then using the Home and End keys, or just pick up the scroll widget and drag it, is all I can say in the short term. In the long term, you're simply going to have to send some test cases into the Mozilla organization...Daily Kos threads of 500+ comments are some of the most complex CSS-rendered pages in the world today, and they will appreciate the real-world test cases. You might suggest they pass the Acid2 test while they're working on a decent CSS implementation.
As for Konqueror, the JavaScript implementation in the 3.4.2 version I have is pitifully inefficient. And combines that with a quick trigger finger on its script continue dialog. It would actually slow everyone else down to slice up some loops large threads generate to avoid that dialog, and it wouldn't make Konqueror run any faster either overall.
Opera 8.5.2 on linux has rendering problems.
Sorry Linux users, it's not me who's relegating you to second-class status. The good news is you can fix many of these browser problems yourself...that's what Open Source is all about, and they are relying on you to at minimum bring them test cases (and motivation) to achieve parity (at least!) with the browsers on Windows and Mac that have none of these issues in current versions.
Fortunately, you have Mozilla 1.7.12...and given these results, it's the only browser we can commit to actively supporting on your platform for the time being.
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
The client code for comments is now just about complete, and I'm already gearing up to proceed to the next stage of Ajaxifying Daily Kos. We'd love to flush out any remaining bugs you can find, so let's hear about them.
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:
- 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: Mozilla 1.7.12
Mozilla 1.7.12:
- The only supported option, sorry.
Firefox 1.5.0.1:
- Rendering time, especially scrolling time, simply pitiful.
Konqueror 3.4:
- Has some problems booting up these scripts; first comment load fails and sometimes it brings up the Script Continue dialog when first loaded. Not recommended or supported but you might be able to use it anyway.
Opera 8.5.2:
- Has some rendering problems, in addition to the problems on Windows.