TagsTagsStinky Beaumont is project-managing a major code refactoring process this weekend, that we’ve been putting off because it’s painful. We’re talking duplicated code. Global variables. Inconsistent variable naming. Remnants from the days before we started coding smart, instead of just getting it working. It’s not all like this, but the ...
The “daily archives” button is back in our left sidebar again. But this time the code checks which browser you’re using, and if it’s Internet Explorer you won’t see the button. The reason: the popup calendar module I’m using, even its latest version, still seems to sporadically trigger an Internet ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, UI Datepicker
We’re trying a new version of the popup calendar Javascript code for our ‘Daily Archives’ feature (in the left sidebar, right underneath the LGF Headlines), an excellent plug-in for jQuery with the highly sexy name jQuery UI Datepicker. Last time this code was seen at LGF, many of you Internet Explorer ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, UI Datepicker
You may have noticed that our ‘Daily Archives’ button in the left sidebar, which pops up a calendar to let you choose a day’s worth of LGF posts, has gone missing. This is because I discovered that the popup calendar module was responsible for that odd Internet Explorer page loading ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, Open Thread
Here’s another thread for LGF lizards to let me know if you’re still experiencing page load errors in Internet Explorer. I’ve been completely unable to duplicate the problem for more than two days now, although I was able to make it happen fairly predictably earlier this week. To test, I’ve turned ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, Open Thread
We’re starting off with an open thread this morning, while I try to find out what’s causing a weird, frustrating bug in Internet Explorer. I thought I had fixed it, but apparently not; I received several emails this morning complaining about it again. The bug happens when the page is loading; ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, Open Thread
After a bunch of reports of trouble with my old friend Internet Explorer, I’ve made some changes that seem to have fixed the problem. If you’re using IE6 or IE7 and have experienced problems loading LGF in the past couple of days, please let me know if everything’s groovy now, ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, Open Thread
One by one, we’re stomping the bugs around here. The big one we stomped last week has solved the problem of those server crashes that were happening almost daily; we haven’t had a server lockup in almost two weeks. Yay. The hamsters are positively beaming. And today another bug, less catastrophic ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, Open Thread
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Turnabout’s fair play. Half of one, six dozen of the other. What I’m trying to say here is that if you have an LGF account and you’re logged in, you can now rate my front page posts, the same way you ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, Comments, Ratings
Several readers have requested a way to see the total number of ratings for a comment, and how many plus or minus ratings it got, in addition to the cumulative total. You can now get this information by clicking the rating number. The rating itself will be updated to the current ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, Comments, Ratings
Here’s an open thread for an egalitarian Thursday evening. Some small but helpful interface enhancements in the comment rating system: * The numbers are slightly larger, and now are colored green for positive numbers, black for zero, or red for negative numbers. * When you rate a comment, your choice is recorded, and ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, Comments, Ratings
Here’s an open thread for a sunny Wednesday morning... I received several emails complaining that the new comment rating system was slowing down page loading, especially on longer threads. So I looked into it, and discovered that I’d forgotten to index a rather vital database field, used in the lookup of ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, Comments, Ratings
I discovered a couple of bugs in the comment rating code that were causing some of you to not see the ratings. If this happened to you, log out and log back in, and your settings will now “stick.” And remember that if you really hate the idea of comment ratings, ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, Comments, Ratings
Hey, the new feature’s here! The new feature’s here! If you’re logged in to your account, you will now be able to rate any comment with our jaunty new plus and minus buttons. The running total (positive, negative, or zero) is shown next to the buttons, and after you rate a ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, Comments, Ratings
I’ve updated a couple of LGF’s Javascript modules to the latest versions: jQuery Calendar, which supplies our popup date picker for the ‘Daily Archives’ button, and Superfish, which supplies the slide-down menus in our left sidebar. Special thanks to Superfish’s creator Joel Birch for helping me debug some abstruse browser-related ...
Since some Firefox users have been reporting problems with the new popout menu code (the menus are in the left sidebar), I’ve revamped and simplified the Javascript for that feature, and removed the animated effect and timed delays. I’ve also added some Javascript that will let the menus work in ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, Suckerfish, Superfish, Menu
To free up some screen real estate and get things organized a little better, all those little boxes full of links in our left sidebar have now been replaced with a series of popout menus, right below the login area. These menus were created with jQuery and the Superfish plugin, along ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, Refactoring, Ajax, jQuery, Suckerfish, Superfish, Menu
A new version of the jQuery Javascript library has been released, and I’ve installed it to check it out. It’s supposed to have some very big speed improvements, which should result in faster loading LGF pages. Since some of you have reported problems with previous versions of jQuery, especially with 1.x ...
This is a quick update on the changes in navigating LGF that I’ve made in the past few days. To keep everything as straightforward as possible, the front page now will show only the current day’s worth of posts. There’s a setting in the LGF Blog Engine for the number ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, PHP, Refactoring, Comments, Ajax, jQuery, Calendar, Archives
At the top and bottom of our front page you will now see a navigation panel that lets you step back by days from the last day on the front page. If you click the link to go back a day, you’re in our “daily viewing” mode, and there will ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, PHP, Refactoring, Comments, Ajax, jQuery, Calendar, Archives
In our left sidebar, just below the panel with our statistics, you’ll now see a button labeled ‘Daily Archives.’ Click that baby and you can choose to view any day’s worth of LGF posts with the popup calendar. I installed this last night as an embedded calendar (i.e., always visible) but ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, PHP, Refactoring, Comments, Ajax, jQuery, Calendar, Archives
The latest changes to announce: 1) The monthly archive pages now show only an excerpt of each post, without images, videos, or any other bandwidth-hungry items, with a link to the individual entry page that contains the full post. Atomization, baby. 2) The LGF Search module now uses a better Javascript calendar ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, PHP, Refactoring, Comments, Ajax, jQuery
At the current rate of comment posting, we’re going to break through the Four Million Barrier in about four more days, sometime next Monday evening or Tuesday morning. The Ajax system has had a huge impact on the number of comments posted, and at the same time reduced our bandwidth ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, PHP, Refactoring, Comments, Ajax, jQuery
More than 5,000 comments today; I’ve created a monster!
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, PHP, Refactoring, Comments, Ajax, jQuery
Here’s an open thread for a hump day afternoon. And since tech threads always turn into open threads anyway, here’s another bit of info that might be interesting to Javascript geeks. I mentioned that I’ve been working with the jQuery Javascript library to do the ‘slide down’ special effects in our ...
LGF, Technical Info, Javascript, PHP, Refactoring, Comments, Ajax, jQuery