Slashdot Mirror

Third time this week. I'm reading through slashdot comments on my mobile and get a popup ad with a "data:text/html;base64" url.

Ignoring the pop-up, I'm not sure why you willingly subject yourself to that torture.

Go install Avantslash on your server and read Slashdot on your phone that way.

Not only will your eyes thank you for it - but your data cap will too.

http://avantslash.org/ - I browse slashdot nearly exclusively using this mobile interface, especially while commuting. Main downside: you need to host it as a script on your own server.

I'm late to the party but I'm hoping that the new powers that be will read every comment once the story has closed. Most of my ideas are either relatively simple code fixes, or fixable by human attention. And I think you'll find that unlike "ban ACs"/"keep ACs", there would be little debate around any of these.

Let's see, how many of my ideas from eight years ago are still relevant?

1. Though it has a long, proud tradition, dupes should be avoided. Slashdot has gotten much, much better in the last few years, but it still happens every so often.

2. Spelling and grammar. PLEASE. And make sure the headlines are parse-able by humans.

3. Useful links. Don't link to a blog post about a blog post about a blog post about a story, unless they have useful commentary that you're highlighting. Just go right to the original. (Or a really good description/summary of it, if the original source is very technical, like a multi-hundred-page published paper.)

4. Fact-checking. Make sure this isn't a hoax. Also, in general, things should be new. Just because some guy just discovered something that someone else posted in 2011, that doesn't mean you need to post about it today.

5. Read the comments. Update the story as needed. If a bunch of people write to say that a story is wrong, fix it!

Other things not mentioned by me in 2008:

1. Use standard tags in standard ways. I think the <i> tag is still broken, though it works in preview mode. And neither

1. ordered

nor

• unordered

lists work.

2. Add a "-1, factually incorrect" mod.

3. Add a rich-text editor. Just a simple one -- bold, ital, underline, UL, OL, subscript, superscript, quote, link, and a few others. (Yes, I know the "few others" are subject to much debate. But you can ship a few and revise alter as needed, right?) And/or support some flavor of Markdown. But allow HTML, because Markdown still sucks for common tasks like linking to URLs that end in parentheses, which many Wikipedia articles do. Eg., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

4. I'm not going to say that unicode support is easy, but it's probably not too hard to support a few more basic characters like smart quotes and em- and en-dashes so it doesn't look like ass when you copy and paste text from another website. Decent rich-text editors usually have this built in.

5. Make a decent mobile view. DO NOT a) worry about supporting every feature or b) make it overly app-like. (Related: make mobile apps?) ALL I WANT is to see a story's headline, the body, who posted it and when, and the number of comments. Something like this http://pixelcity.com/slashdot/... which I made years ago but got tired of maintaining after the Nth code change. Here is my old project page, which was one PHP script. AvantSlash does much more.

That's all I can think of for now. Just fix all that and then I'll share more ideas. :D

Slashdot classic even if the code wasn't broken somewhat is great for a desktop but horrid on a mobile.

If you have a web server with cgi/perl support somewhere, you can try installing this: Avantslash. The main page loads in 33 kB and a typical comments page is below 100 kB at threshold 2. And it is optimized for efficient use of screen real-estate and low CPU demands. Works even on my ancient Nokia N82 (2008-era, 64 MB internal memory).

Oh, yeah, the mobile site.
I recommend it gets the same treatment as the Beta. Shitcan them both.

I've been reading Slashdot on my mobile using AvantSlash for many many years. It's sole reason for living is so that I don't have to try and use the official mobile site.

Maybe it's worth a look?

I read Slashdot daily on my iPhone using Avantslash.

I think it works great and it's far better than m.slashdot.org - but then I'm biased as I wrote it. Yes, screen-scraping and reformatting is a little hacky, but this script has been required to read Slashdot on your phone for the past 10+ years. At the rate we're going, it'll probably be needed for at least another 5 years.

If you don't believe me then try the demo on your own mobile phone first.

I read Slashdot daily on my iPhone using Avantslash.

I think it works great and it's far better than m.slashdot.org - but then I'm biased as I wrote it. Yes, screen-scraping and reformatting is a little hacky, but this script has been required to read Slashdot on your phone for the past 10+ years. At the rate we're going, it'll probably be needed for at least another 5 years.

If you don't believe me then try the demo on your own mobile phone first.

Owned original HTC Desire and still love it, despite browsing Slashdot on it was soo slow.

Blatant plug: AvantSlash - mobile version of slashdot.org. Works fine even with my wife's HTC Tattoo (Android 1.6, 256 MB RAM) and my old Nokia N82. It's implemented as a kind of proxy, so you'll need to install it on an internet-facing web server (don't all hard-core Slashdot readers have one?)