TagsTagsSeveral readers have emailed lately to say they’re having problems with the login form, using Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7. I don’t have Vista installed here yet (still using XP - OEM copy of Vista on the way, though), so I’m opening a thread for comments to discuss the ...
LGF, Tech Note, Login, Vista, Windows Vista, Internet Explorer
A very common complaint I receive about the comment rating system is that people accidentally hit the wrong button—resulting in a plus where they intended a minus, or vice versa. So now, after clicking the plus or minus button, the opposite button will still be active and clicking it will reverse ...
LGF, Tech Note, Comments, jQuery, Javascript, User Interface, Comment Ratings
In our comment entry form, I’m trying out a new way of inserting the HTML tags for bold, italics, etc., based on a very nice plugin for the jQuery Javascript library titled markItUp. This plugin has several improvements over the code I was using, and is more cross-browser compatible, so ...
LGF, Tech Note, Comments, jQuery, Javascript, User Interface, MarkItUp
A technique I use at LGF to speed up the loading of Javascript files is to run them through a “minifier” script that removes spaces and extraneous formatting such as comments. Combined with server-side gzip compression, this produces the smallest possible download size. (There’s another technique for compressing Javascript called ...
LGF, Tech Note, jQuery, Javascript, Minify, Crockford, Linux, shell script
I’ve received a few emails from Mac users who are still running version 2 of the Safari web browser with Mac OS 10.4, saying that Safari is crashing at LGF. I’ll check into it, but the best way to get it working immediately is to upgrade to version 3 of ...
After evaluating the impact of our new live updating code for the “Now Playing” section of the left sidebar, I’ve decided to limit the live updates to registered, logged in users. At our normal peak traffic times, with thousands of browsers checking the server at 30 second intervals via Ajax, ...
LGF, Tech Note, Javascript, Now Playing, Music, Amazon, Optimization
The “Now Playing” section of our left sidebar, which is set up to show the music or other weird sounds that are currently playing in iTunes on my machine, now updates in an “almost live” fashion. With Ajax and a Javascript timer, it checks the server every 20 seconds to ...
I received a couple of emails last night asking what happened to the lists of news sites and blogs that were in our right sidebar for years. They’re still here! Those sections have now been moved to the left sidebar, in that collection of “flippy triangle” menus. Just click the headings ...
LGF, Tech Note, Comments, jQuery, Javascript, User Interface, flippy triangles
The LGF interface cleanup continues; the “News/Opinion” and “Anti-Idiotarians” sections that used to be in our right sidebar have been moved to the left sidebar and set up as Flippy Triangle menus. (“Anti-Idiotarians” has been renamed to “Blogs.”) Both of these sections are dynamically refreshed via Ajax each time you click ...
LGF, Tech Note, Comments, jQuery, Javascript, User Interface, flippy triangles
I’ve been using that Flippy Triangle technique to organize more of the stuff that used to be visible by default in our left sidebar, like the Statistics, the Tag Cloud, and the contact form. This user interface saves a lot of space; in fact, the sidebar looks almost naked with ...
LGF, Tech Note, Comments, jQuery, Javascript, User Interface, flippy triangles
You may have noticed that I've organized the stuff in our left sidebar with a series of "accordion" menus; some call this style the Flippy Triangle, since a little triangle indicates whether the menu is currently expanded or not, by ... flipping, believe it or not. Here's the technique I'm using ...
LGF, Tech Note, Comments, jQuery, Javascript, User Interface, flippy triangles
You might have noticed that I’ve gotten rid of those pop-out menus in the left sidebar, and redesigned that section to use the same expandable “accordion” menus as the “LGF Headlines” and “Recent Comments.” Two benefits to this tweak: 1) It eliminates one jQuery plugin from our lineup of Javascript utilities, resulting ...
LGF, Tech Note, Comments, jQuery, Javascript, User Interface
The LGF CommentSpy has been renamed simply “LGF Spy,” because its powers have been greatly expanded with little or no congressional oversight. In a nutshell, the LGF Spy now displays nearly every user-initiated action (comments, spinoff links, or ratings) that happens at LGF, in very close to real time. (Every three ...
LGF, Tech Note, Comments, jQuery, Javascript, CommentSpy, LGF Spy
We’re unveiling a new feature for registered LGF users — the dreaded nefarious CommentSpy. The link shows up in your login panel at the top of the left sidebar. When you click that link, a new window opens displaying the most recent 10 comments posted in all front page articles and ...
To make it more obvious which “pseudo-links” will cause some hidden content to slide into view, they’re now styled in green, with little “flippy triangles” to show that clicking them will display their associated content. Also, the “LGF Headlines,” “Recent Comments,” and “Top 10 Comments” all use a similar collapsible menu ...
An open thread for a Friday morning; I’m chasing down a long-running, very annoying character translation bug, that causes Western European characters (with accènts, ümlauts, etc.) to show up as garbage when the Ajax system transfers them back and forth from the server. I’m pretty sure I’ve finally killed the bug, ...
Actually, they’re “regressions,” not “adjustments.” Versions 6 and 7 of Internet Explorer have bugs that prevent our new comment reporting and user profile features from working correctly; it appears that these versions of IE get very cranky if you try to create an IFRAME via Javascript that fills the entire ...
Internet Explorer, Javascript, BlockUI, jQuery, Report, Comments, Tech Note, LGF
This thread is going to be for testing purposes — don’t post any comments here that you wouldn’t mind being deleted. For that matter, the whole thread may disappear. The game is afoot.
As we continue to Ajaxify the LGF Blog Engine, the latest new feature is the user profile display, which appears when you click on a commenter’s personal icon. (Or if they haven’t uploaded a personal icon, the tiny green football.) Instead of opening a new window with the profile data, it ...
LGF, Ajax, Javascript, Tech Note, jQuery, dialog box, Comments, profiles
Extending our comment reporting feature to the spinoff links feature is a natural. Like comments, the links are content supplied by our users, and occasionally a link will be posted that is inappropriate for one reason or another and needs to be deleted. So, when you’re logged in to your LGF ...
To help us keep track of what’s going on in our comments, tonight we have some new features in our “report” function. The first thing you’ll notice is that there’s no longer a text link labeled “report” in the top line of each comment. Instead, there’s an icon that’s supposed to ...
LGF, Tech Note, Comments, Report, jQuery, BlockUI, Javascript
All day I’ve been watching the online visitor count suddenly jump way up, but without the referrals that would indicate a link from a high volume site. It’s happened four or five times, and the cause in each case has been a web crawler trying to load every page at ...
From a glance at the PHP error logs I can see that more than a few registered lizards are having trouble uploading an image for their personal icon. The most common causes are: * Trying to upload an image that’s too large. We don’t have unlimited storage space for images, so ...
A new feature tonight, especially for the newly hatched among us. Our registration system works by sending an email containing a link that must be clicked to activate the account. But occasionally this confirmation email does not reach the hapless hatchling. Some think the most common cause of this problem is over-zealous ...
LGF, Tech Note, Registration, Activation, Confirmation, Email, Spam Filter
From a glance at the error log, I see that some people have been having trouble using our contact form; however, I’m also getting plenty of email through the form, so I know it is working as intended. There are two things your browser must allow in order to use the ...