O hai, Cranky Users! I'm going to try and get this out a little early today, because I can't stick around in the evening -- while it's true that I have no life, occasionally I am called upon to leave my computer. Strange, I know!
Today we have some good news, and some tricks we gathered yesterday, so let's elbow our way past the squiggle and get to it!
☯ First, a bit of good news about messages. You'll recall that anyone who was invited to a group was getting all the group's messages along with their invitation, and these messages could be neither opened nor deleted. We have a report that that's been fixed. I have not joined any new groups to test the part about getting them in the first place, but I can report that I'm finally able to delete all the zombie group messages and have them NOT come back! If you'd like to do this, but also have your own messages from actual people that you need to keep, you can separate them in your Messages tab by clicking Group Messages and deleting all those. (Your group invitation will be in there, so if you still want that, skip over it.)
☯ More good news, in the form of a workaround: many of us have been struggling with the Groups page and finding the available ways to sort it unhelpful. We've whined for an alphabetical sort. The excellent Clem Yeobright has the answer. By now, you know that you can click the GO button next to the Search box and get to Diary Search, and then get the additional orange options (with carrots!) to search Comments, Users, Groups, or Tags. So if you click the group search, and then just click the Search button without typing anything, you get a list of ALL groups (259 as I write). And this list can be sorted by any of the column headings! It comes sorted by date of last diary, but if you click on Group (ie name), it will sort in name order. If you want to start at the end of the alphabet, click again on Group, so the little arrowhead points up instead of down, and the order will flip. Further, if you hover over a name, you'll see the group's description.
Now let's say you might like to follow the group, but you don't want to lose your place in this list. Right-click on the name, and click Open Link in New Tab (I'm using Firefox to report to you here -- YMMV somewhat for other browsers). Go to the new tab and look at the group, click its heart if you want, and close the tab, and your list is still there. It's magic!
☯ Let's talk for a minute about the Welcome Back box. It hangs out on the right side of most DK pages. At the top it says, Welcome Back (your name) and shows your avatar. If you're tired of so many clicks to go back to My Page and then find what you want, this is for you. In the box are direct links to all the subcategories found under My Page: your diaries, your stream, comments (## recent is the link), groups (that you're a member of, not following), messages and profile. Try this -- it does save some of those mouseclicks we all complain about! h/t to Clem also for this!
☯ Lots of people have reported an issue with recommending comments. If you click recommend, and then try to move away from the comment using the arrow keys on your keyboard, the site thinks you're trying to toggle through the comment-rating choices and asks you if you're sure you want to hide-rate this comment. What you need to do is get the "focus" off the recommend button. You can click somewhere else on the screen, or you can just use your mouse wheel or the scroll bar to move away from the comment. This, too, is a workaround -- it shouldn't work like that, but right now, this is how to deal with it without using up your donuts on people who aren't doing any harm!
☯ Here's a little style thing: strikethrough. You know, like when you make a mistake improve your writing! In DK3, there was a style shortcut of surrounding the strikethrough words with -hyphens-, much as you can bold by surrounding with asterisks and italicize by surrounding with underscores. But that doesn't work any more, so you'll need html tags. You can use <s>strikethrough</s> or <del>strikethrough</del>.
☯ And last for today, an advanced tip, h/t to weatherdude. Up at the top of your My Page and all its sub-pages, you'll see your user name. But it doesn't have to be your user name there -- that's your blog's name. Yes, this is your very own blog now, and you can name it anything you want. To change the name, go to your Profile, click Edit Profile, and scroll down to the Your Blog box. Type the name you want, then scroll down and click the Save button. (If you haven't edited your profile before, this is also where you can change you sig line, avatar picture, bio, and so on.) If you want to see an example, the weatherdude link above goes to his blog, El Blogo de Weatherdudeo (who knew he was so fluent in Spanish?)
That's plenty for today! The main thing here is the comment thread, where we invite you to bitch about whatever is making you cranky (about DK4! Otherwise, we recommend WYFP). If you see someone else with an issue you know the answer to, feel free to share what you know. Our goal is to get our questions and complaints up on the screen and in front of many eyes, and to help each other along in this new world. Nobody here is stupid or slow, and nobody here is being malicious by complaining, so we ask that anyone feeling a little impatient with us take a time-out rather than get testy. We honor everyone who has worked so hard on the site and everyone who's trying to help us, so we ask the same of any of us toward developers, beta testers, and site advocates who come here with advice. Yes we're cranky, but we're not mean! (Mean people: Red State is that way==> )